Round Trip

transfixed

As a child, to suddenly see a black swan
for the first time, slow
and silent on a small dam,
was to learn what beauty was

and how shocking,
how much of a thief, stealing
time to fix me forever
to that memory of a coal-black swan
and its blood-red beak.

tunnel

Enter the dark, stone
underfoot. Imagine shovels
and picks; dynamite. Rain. No sun
even when it’s there
somewhere out in the green. It took
two years to build this tunnel.
Smell the moss and damp rock. Listen out
for missing trains.

Catlins beach

Cars creeping up the sand.
Wild hens in the sand dunes, their feathers
disturbed by the wind. Watch out. That rooster
looks like he’s about to go on the attack.
Cars. Hens. Making no sense; out
of place; on a beach
with its well-behaved waves
that have come all the way from Chile.

water falling

Water falling into white noise.
A ghostly drape. The fulsome veil
of a bride with no dress sense.
Our niece Rebecca has lived in Holland
now for years, a country where it’s so flat
there is no such thing as a waterfall.
She misses them, she said, even though
as a kid when on road trips
her Dad insisted on stopping at each one.
‘Not another waterfall,’ she’d groan.
It was as if he knew.

lighthouse

Out there they drowned, so many
bodies they had to bury them
where they were beached.
Then built a lighthouse (too late)
so it wouldn’t happen again. Still
it stands. Electrified.

clematis

Jill told us about her and Dave once tramping for miles
to find a patch of clematis, only
to discover upon returning home
that it was in the bush
all around their house. Clematis
strung like fairy lights, stars, pearls.
There. There. And there.

Tūrangawaewae

We used to drive over the bridge. Not now,
the road going somewhere else altogether.
Bolts, rivets, wire ropes and iron struts.
River, mountain, island, stones.
There is much to stand on.
And we do.

limestone country

The land sinks into caves
Where the grass is so green
It doesn’t look real. Falling
into fountains of grass.

near Alexandra

A western sky suggests
the promise of air loosely tethered
and space and light. Of breath
blowing through
the pleat of mountains.
Warm wind through wire.
Of opening out
an accordion of sun.