I've known you for so long,
Longer than forever,
Longer than all the circles of hell,
Longer than simply never.

I remember your cracks
On your wind-chapped lips,
Every wrinkle on your hands
Because of a strong freeze.

I hear every your word
That is kept quiet by you.
It's like a movie in constant replay,
In which I can't hear you.

I've got away so many times...
Or maybe I thought so...
The result is that I've never been able to.
And now I'm here in whole.

I'm with you, completely rudderless.
I don't need it at all.
I think I'll watch the rest of my life
Here, with you in the starring role.

Summer began soft—
honeymilk pooled through mango leaves,
pigeons feather-heavy on telephone wires—
the whole world gold—
still ripening—
like something that didn't know how to end.

I remember the river—
thin-*****, sun-fed—
wearing the sky like a borrowed veil—
bruised lavender by dusk,
silver-stitched by midnight.

We were half-salted, half-feral—
knees green-stained,
pockets lined with papaya seeds,
believing if we never named the days
they could never leave us.

Evenings folded in hibiscus hush
mothers calling from verandahs
their voices trailing jasmine heat
but we stayed
bloom-fed—
learning how silence could taste like belonging.

There was a boy
wild-haired, sugar-grinned
who carved his name into the gulmohar—
said it was the only way
to outlive summer.

I never carved mine.
I wanted to belong to something
without leaving a scar.

The river kept what we couldn't—
pocket marbles clouded with spit,
cicada shells,
prayers hushed into cupped palms—
half-wishing, half-forgetting.

When the rains came—
soft at first—
then harder—
we waded knee-deep through the swell,
our laughter thin as dragonfly wings—
something breaking beneath it.

But rivers don't keep secrets.
They carry them.

By August—
the gulmohar stood stripped—
his name unstitched—
washed down to sea.

By September—
the river forgot itself—
spitting up broken dolls,
rusted bicycle chains—
whole summers gutted in the mud.

By October—
we learned
the world is only ever borrowed.

I wonder if the boy remembers
if his name still flickers beneath the water
stitched somewhere too deep to touch.

I never carved mine—
but if you pressed your ear to the current
if you listened long enough—
I swear you'd still hear me,
a salt-thin breath
folded beneath the hush.

Morning unfurls—
thin gold draped over the terrace rim,
the world still dream-fed, undecided.

She moves through it—
wild-crowned in bramble and gold,
a flower skewed in her hair—
stem fractured, wind-touched
but worn as if it could never be
anything less than perfect.

Something in her
the way her chin tilts to the sky,
the way sunlight spills across
the same high cheekbones,
the same quiet brow—
pulls at something nameless
beneath my ribs,
a longing too tender to name.

Her laughter
windstruck — a ripple in the skin of dawn,
spins loose, untethered,
a sound without edges,
without destination—
just the raw, impossible ache
of something alive
for no other reason
than because.

The air folds around her
soft, golden-bellied
as if the whole world
was holding its own
watching, waiting—
for a beauty
too wild to know itself.

I watch too,
not out of wonder,
but out of fear—
that something so fleeting
could slip through this hour
without ever being written down.

She will grow
the flower will fall,
the wind will learn her name,
and the sky will no longer
be enough to hold her.

But for now,
she blooms only for the sun,
for the hush,
for the wild, unmeasured ache
of simply being.

And I swear—
if I could stretch this hour
into forever,
I would—
just to watch her run
one breath longer.

Some joys bloom for nothing—
not for the gaze, not for the name—
but simply because the sun is warm,
simply because they can.

I did not smile at her.
I smiled at the hush—
the unbearable miracle
of something wild
that does not know
it is precious.

The hush lingers,
the morning folds—
soft gold cradling a face
that no longer lifts toward the sun.

The air no longer waits.
Only I do.

And beneath my fingertips,
the photo trembles—
thin, timeworn—
edges curled like petals,
as if the years have tried
to fold her back into a bloom.

now, in this hush,
I turn to her—
and I smile.

She was my mother.
She was a girl once,
unwritten.

And I—
I have spent my whole life
trying to read her.

There's always a beginning
There'll always be an end
And no matter how you play your cards
You won't see round the bend.
For tomorrow is another day
The morning sun will shine
And the layer of potentialities
Is arrayed for yours and mine.

In looking back a long time
A little boy in jeans,
Check shirt on a pushbike
Amid the in betweens.
Nothing really mattered,
Each day came and went
and before the realization dawned
The infancy was spent.

Mother died of cancer
The agony in eyes
Just 43 years of age
In alcoholic lies.
The Old Man was likewise
Collapsing in my arms
He passed away at 43.
Evaporated charms.

Adolescence came and went
Forced to join the race
Of madness in the unknown
The world's a violent place.
Decision ****** upon in spades
Cut and ****** in life
It's Papua or Vietnam
Instead, I took a wife .

Disaster in the making
A sidestep in the way
I left the complication there
And coldly strode away.
Changed the whole complexion
Altered how it planned
Ended up with knapsack on
Afresh in New Zealand.

Strangely how it re-aligns
The order falls in place
Confusion dissipates to let
What clear defined, creates.
Somewhere I turned the corner
Took it all in hand
Built an actuality
Of promise in this land.

Pride and hard ambition,
defy the odds and graft.
Visualize a rainbow
From inspiration's craft.
Build it with your own two hands
With sweat upon your brow
And know, within your very depth
You're on the right path now.

Lady luck was with me
Somewhere along the way
I found myself a sweetheart
In chance creation's way
Then ragamuffin boychilds
Scrapping on the rug,
Engendered that which matters
In life's eternal shrug.

You touch upon the beauty
You taste the honeyed wine,
You walk on fields of flowers
In the nectar of your time.
Tenderness and kindness
Essential to the mix
Should you wish to be of value
In the blended world you fix.

Some you win, some you lose
Sometimes you just laugh
For as the years meander
There's humor in the task....
And a gentle satisfaction
In the way it all pans through
And in my eighty year reflection
I'll just throw a smile to you.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ