Man and boy laughing,
their kite dipping on the breeze.
In the silent house,
woman reads Sunday papers,
ear attuned to one car sound.

Midnight-blue swamphen,
first tracks in the dewy grass.
A mist hides the lake,
a spire rising from the mist,
bells tolling, no more silence.

Child cries, hurt in play,
mother comes to console her.
Old woman walks home,
tasting the salt of her tears.
No fire lit for her return.

Girl hangs upside down,
dark hair trailing in the sand.
Gulls dive on ducklings,
dropped from high on hard water,
their blood mingling with the lake.

The car horns toll the knell of parting day,
The toxic fumes creep slowly o’er the park,
The traffic homeward plods its weary way,
And leaves the world to joggers and the dark.

Now fades the shimmering lakescape on the sight,
And to the air the dusk its stillness brings,
Save where mosquitoes wheel in droning flight,
Ross River virus loaded in their stings;

Save that from yonder television tower
The besieged magnate to his “mates” complains
The A.B.T. has exercised its power,
Sent him packing without ill-gotten gains.

Beneath those tiled roofs, that mortgaged shade,
Where heaves the serf in many an exhausted heap,
Each of the dole queue mortally afraid,
Whose forefathers once rode upon the sheep.


The wheezy cough of beery-breathing morn,
They swallow Berocca for their straw-filled heads,
The clock’s shrill clarion, or their arguing spawn,
Once more shall rouse them from beloved beds.

For they no more have savings in their banks,
Both busy partners toil to meet their ends;
No children run to lisp their heartfelt thanks,
They clamour for Air Jordans like their friends.

Oft did their annual jaunt to Bali yield,
Their furrows smoothed by oily massage strokes;
How jocund were their Customs trolleys wheeled!
Their cases bowed by extra grog and smokes!

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their media-fed dreams have learned to stray;
The Holy Grail of the Lotto life
Has taken free out of the word Freeway.

All day the sky had been an empty promise
then, crossing the park,
the rain came like a visitation,
the wind rousing the Norfolks
into a frenzy of flagellation.
Then it was gone,
leaving Freo freshwashed
and bathed in a quality of light
usually reserved for heaven.
Under the rail bridge
the river uncoiled through the freezeframed harbour
like an oiled anaconda
and the train skated over the scales of this reptilian mystery.
Out from Leighton, yachts and oil tankers
rode the dolphinslick sea.
A pale yelloworange band
cleaved the sea and sky
as the bluegrey roof of cloud slowly collapsed
under the weight of darkness.
Rottnest was a five o’clock shadow on the horizon.
Surfers bobbed like seals, rising
to ****** the last wave
of polished jade
from the encroaching night.

With never a thought for the shadow of corrosion
nor the fertile breeding ground
of eel slime and rabbit guts,
we took adventure’s companion:
the pocket-knife,
and sliced our thumbs.
A fragment of pain
much less than its apprehension;
to watch
the rubyed jewel of life
swell
then run to kiss the earth with salty gravity.
Pressing our thumbs together,
blood into blood,
we made a symbol of our bond.

This was a time
when blood was blood
and not more virulent
than rats in Renaissance Europe.
When “Magic” Johnson was a messiah.
When dentists and doctors probed with impunity.
Before plasma was a Trojan Horse for haemophiliacs.

Now
even the mosquito’s drone assails our mortality
yet we are loath
to shipwreck its cargo of strange blood.
The body once a temple
now a fortress.
But what is to be our vigilance
when the enemy lies within?

When other couples are growing
as pale and familiar as sun-bleached wallpaper
we are growing together.
Our emotions are an expanding business
that exercises new stock options on happiness.
A wire, tubular and fat with lovesongs,
is strung between our hearts
with the excitement of the first telephone
on which we coo our communications,
well aware that we disgust those of a cynical nature.
We fight and pick faults,
but every night we clean the saddle of burrs
and ride out fresh for daybreak horizons,
anxious to be reunited by evening.
We have nothing to hide from each other
and we never speak without listening.
We build a bridge from our dreams
that takes us into the future,
shaping each unique day with the hands of hope.
And still there is
room for romance to be romantic.

It is an ancient Poet
and he stoppeth me.
“Beware of poetry, my son,
She’s a gold digger.
She’ll chew you up and spit you out,
leave you penniless and lying in a gutter,
drunk on absinthe,
while the rich novelists and scriptwriters
step over you, laughing.”

“Hold off! unhand me, greybeard loon!”
Unheeding, I slunk off to my garret
to compose a villanelle,
heavily derivative of Dylan Thomas.
  
I only wanted to get girls,
but before I knew it
I was roaming with the Romantics,
bopping with the Beats
and cruising with the Classicists.
Popping some Pope, shooting some Stevie Smith
or hitting up Heaney,
I was hopelessly addicted.
And I never did get the girl.

Have you ever stood,
craning your neck to look up into the canopy
of the ancient kauri, Tane Mahuta,
while peace and birdsong permeate your soul?

Have you ever felt
the crusty spray and the satanic whiff
as the Pohutu geyser shoots aloft
while a dozen languages bubble through te reo?

Have you ever shivered
in the receding darkness,
standing in the china-white sand as you waited
for the first sunrise over Makorori Beach?

Have you ever sat
on the summit of Mt Taranaki
and eaten a well-deserved sandwich
while cows grazed far below on the lush, volcanic-rich pasture?

Have you ever experienced
that mixture of fear and awe
as an orca’s dorsal breached beside your too-fragile kayak
in the shining waters of the Abel Tasman?

Have you ever paused
atop a ski run on Coronet Peak
and reflected on the reflections
of sunlight dancing on snow and water?

Have you ever felt sorry
for tourism chiefs and advertising creatives
trapped in offices in the Auckland CBD
dreaming up “100% Pure” and “Clean and Green”?