We were in the same lesson
And i don't know if you knew
I'd sit at the back of our old classroom
Watching the way the sun shone
Straight through your hair
And the way his hand held yours
I'd whisper this life is so unfair
Did you not notice the way
My hand shook when i picked up those books that your dropped
Thinking you did that on purpose
Just to make me stop
But those days seem so long ago now
And all i remember is

Old papers and school books
Your name calved in some tree's
My god please take me back
To nineteen sixty three

And i found you one day
Please tell me you atleast remember that
You were sitting with your hair messed up
Looking beautiful on the grass
But your face wasn't a happy one
So i sat beside you
All i remember of that day my love
Was the smell of your perfume
Rendering me quite simply
Unable to move
Do you remember i held out my hand
But thought you'd push it back
Instead you placed it on the space between your pretty cotton skirt
And your feet rested on the grass
Those days seem so long ago now
And it's easy to forget
But i could never forget you my love
You are always in my head
And those memories of

Old papers and school books
Your name calved in some tree's
My god please take me back
To nineteen sixty three

Then it finally happened one day
I placed all my bets on you
Invested my soul but i had no choice
**** a lovestruck fool
You agreed we could meet that night
Outside the Nevada State Fair
I just knew on my arms would be
The most beautiful girl there
Along to the music we danced
And i held you in my arms
Those lights all around us moved
In this storm you were my calm
The chaos all around us parted
As my hands rolled through your hair
My lips pressed up real tight
Against your ear
In my dreams i've been here before
So many a time
My lovely sweet Louisa, stay with me a while
Then i don't quite know what happened
But those years passed us by
Watched my sister on her wedding day
Such a beautiful bride
And my parents were laid to rest perfectly side by side
Me and Louisa we lost touch
But i still see her face sometimes
When i close my eyes and think of

Old papers and school books
Your name calved in some tree's
My god please take me back
To nineteen sixty three

float my body
over
the sea of stones**

each one,
a memory
composed from
the mountain song
of my life....
calved into the river
of love.

to swim away
from me,
in a mission
of exploration
to the rims of reality.

float my body
over
the sea of stones.

that i may see
again,
the places i went,
the lives i lived

and then,
lay me down
in their cold embrace.
that i may ,
once more
live in the hard edged
ecstasy,
of my juvenescence.
the jagged days
of,
middle age
and the
slowgrindingdown
of
the latter days...

let me settle down
to
sleep,
amongst the
whispering rattle
of the stones,
as they
sing a lulluby
to my aged, decaying bones...

A small inanimate object,
just a piece of calved shiny wood.
Could bring so much attention,
As only beautiful wood could.

It’s uses is that of so many,
as a sculpture to help those to create.
others to inspire imagination,
and many to help them to paint.

As a dummy to help with demonstrations,
As a muse for inspiration to the mind.
As a companion for those that are lonely,
All built to a dummies design...**

Sheila
16/11/2014

A family once of five they moved into a house so big
That was half way up a mountain ever so very high
And this oldest home needed lots of love and renovation
So they thought that as a family they would together try
Within this oldest home was a very largest ever mirror
Aged at least one thousand years or maybe even more
The Agents deal was who ever bought the home that they
Would vow to never move the mirror from at any time for sure
So they moved in al the parents made the family promise
As it was vowed to Agents and they all said that they understood
It was as old as time this mirror to look at it where it was
From the floor to the ceiling with a thick frame of oldest wood
And there next to it something written in un known language
Calved into the side of the mirror so very long long ago it seems
But all promised never to move or do anything to this old piece
Although the younger ones ignored it as it all seemed extreme
Away up in high within the attic was a trunk of the same age
And it had been locked up there so very long ago it was told
And that just like the mirror it was as well to be all hands off
As it was told by Agents a curse was placed on it in days of old
Well that mirror and the trunk both stood untouched for years
Long after the family they had moved into this biggest house
But of nights they'd hear sighs and crying coming from a distance
Mostly always when all was dark and late and quiet as a mouse
One day when the rest of the family had gone to town to shops
They left a son at home to mind things and the house that be
And as it was he simply could not resist the trunk in the attic
What was really in there he simply ever so wanted thus to see
Up he went and he banged and whacked and hammered it so
And all of a sudden the old lock right to the floor it had then fell
And the only thing he found was that was in there an oldest gown
But of what he had after the vow done he could never ever tell
He left it right there unlocked for the while not real sure
What if anything he should ever do about what he’d done true
After all he thought what with an oldest dusty gown such as this
Would he ever do he thought as this gown was very far from new
One day later from a local university came a man who studied so
They had him later on take a look at mirror and message there
To their surprise he could read most of it as of this he did know
The story it told it was a surprise to them way beyond compare
It seemed a mistress of the master long ago came to the house
And after which the master’s wife she came home by surprise
And not knowing where to hide at all the mistress hidden herself
Behind this big mirror to escape the masters wife’s searching eyes
Now she was so undressed at the time so the master he had put
Her gown up in the attic in a largest trunk and then locked it there
But the master’s wife she was involved in witchery and she said
I put a curse on whoever was here to last forever I do swear
The mistress had due to the curse become part of the mirror
Forever more she was caught in this mirror without her gown
And it was that if she could ever find her clothes that she wore
She would escape the curse and the house so far away from town
So the son hearing this thought he would return her gown to her
And he then thought that she might be appreciative to him if so
But what he had not thought of at all during all of this plan of his
Was he looked so much like this oldest master wouldn’t you know
The son he took that old dusty gown to the mirror one dark night
Before he knew it the mistress was out of the mirror and he was in
And his clothes were then locked in that old chest up in the attic
By some unknown strange state of events without a single noise or din
Now his parents not being able to find their son at all they searched
And later they noticed the banged and bent lock hanging on it there
Thinking he might be in it they eventually got it off with some trouble
And to their surprise there was his clothes now dusty showing wear
No sign of him appeared for years after that and then one sunny day
Looking at this mirror they noticed the message on it that now it read
I’m sorry I didn’t listen but I’m stuck in this mirror naked as a jay bird
And I wished to God I had listened and done what the agent said instead.

Terrence Michael Sutton
copyright 2011

Janet and I went for a scoot around the Egmont volcano and, in one of our avenues of approach, climbed up through the winding green chloaca, (tunnel), of alpine forest to the 4000’ limits of the road, just below the snowline.

On this brilliant, blue sky day, with the afternoon rays illuminating all in relief, the vast bulk of the volcano loomed above us. Vertical hanging valleys with shiny black flanks of split ignimbrite and basalt glistening in the afternoon light.
The sheer immensity of the brooding giant before us, above us, now quiescent, but not so long ago the scene of gigantic unimaginable carnage where whole sections of the  mountain’s flank calved off and plummeted annihilating everything in it’s path. Vast lahars of debris, housing lava boulders the size of a bus, cascading down the mountainside at near terminal velocity travelling up to 30 kilometers, right to and beyond the surfline of the Tasman sea.

The volcano has collapsed innumerable times in the last 2.5 million years only to build itself back to it’s 8000’ height with fresh magmatic and explosive eruptivity.

These andesite volcanos are quite unpredictable. Like now, at this moment standing in the magnificent grandeur of the looming massif, enjoying the vastness of it all, the freezing air and the alpine peacefullness….one never knows what the next moment will bring…..and when they do erupt the violence of these volcanos is beyond anything you can imagine.

But for this moment, there is a pristine peace in the massive larva flows capped with the soft greens of  alpine tundra and moss, the cascading, noisy waterfalls in every valley and crevasse. Freezing cold clear fresh water originating in the deep snow above and the dripping ice cornicles which adorn the top geometry of the summit.

There is magnificence here on the Egmont volcano….and we can feel it, deep in our bones.

M@Foxglove,Taranaki,NZ