Tuesday Poem: "Not God But Close"

Sometimes someone will strike

like lightning in your life,

setting your trees afire and searing their presence

deep into the bark of memory.

Such a one was Michael Parmee.

It was 1968.

Paris was burning, the Chicago Seven were protesting

the first war to be televised

and hippies were celebrating the Summer of Love

in Haight-Ashbury,

but 55 miles north of Auckland

the turmoil of the times did not touch

the sleepy hamlet of Wellsford.

New Zealand was enjoying its fat years as food-bowl

to Mother England

and downsizing, restructuring and employment contracts

were but distant nightmares undreamed.

Wellsford’s raison d’être was farming

and a large primary school catered for townies

and the children of the clover

converging from all points rural

in red and tan Education Department buses.

It was 1968.

I was 11 and our Form One class had a new teacher.

He was young and he radiated energy and joie de vivre.

I do not know where he came from or where he went to,

but for two years he had a profound impact on me.

Michael Parmee brought basketball.

The paraphernalia and American cultural colonisation

were two decades distant

and all he had to ignite our imaginations

was the celebration of speed, power and grace

that is the game of basketball.

It was more than enough.

He showed us the rules and bullrush gave way

to basketball as the preferred unisex pastime.

To go beyond the call of duty was second nature to him

so that he set up and ran a district competition.

In Form Two I had another teacher, but Michael Parmee

continued to illuminate my life.

He came up with the idea that the children

would write an original play and perform it

for the town.

About ten of us, in whom he had discerned

a passion and flair for writing,

were allowed time out of class to meet regularly

in the staff-room under his guidance

to fashion a full-length play from imaginations

still one step ahead

of being socialised into submission.

Brainstorming, seizing on a concept, plotting,

giving our ideas a structure, writing scenes as

individuals and melding them as a group – the creation

of the play was the highlight of each week for me.

And each week Michael Parmee fanned the flames

to burn brighter.

The brushfires he had started in our hearts

now towered the sky with their tongues.

The play completed, he auditioned actors and musicians

and I got a part.

My first experience of the stage

before drama sadly lay dormant for many years.

But at twelve years of age, it is a powerful thing

to see your idea born and nurtured into 3-D.

And it was only when I heard Michael Parmee say,

“Fuck!”,

one night in the wings while witnessing

a minor disaster occur on stage

that I realised he was not God.

We all have those one or two or three teachers that we really remember who had a profound influence on us. Michael Parmee's father was a published poet, Frederick Parmee.

Michael would probably be in his late sixties now. I don't know what he did after he left Wellsford, but I'll bet whatever it was, it was impressive and creative. I hope he is still alive and I hope he has had a great life.