Stranded in the capital

Apologies to my fellow Tuesday poets and readers of Tuesday Poem, but I've missed two Tuesday postings because we came to Wellington for a school holiday visit and have been stranded by bleak weather from returning home.

I'm sorry I didn't know about the Helen Lowe get together in Wellington last night.

On a more positive note, I've just finished reading our own dear Mary McCallum's debut novel, The Blue, and I highly recommend it to one and all. A wonderful, engrossing, engaging read! Well done, Mary!

Tuesday Poem: "Naked and Blameless"

Stepping through a threshold

into a harsher light

illuminating pain                                     held onto tight

inside hands

made old with nurture and youthful

from grasping change                            held onto until

the palms bleed crimson with love,

love betrayed, love altered,

love bought, love sold

and love

flung green and hopeful on stony barren ground.

She goes forward,

a satyr dancing along the wild goat ruts

to the sparkle of the Aegean's music,

she goes forward,

joy singing its susurrating ocean

in her ears, deep in her heart

a whispering liberation snared by ghosts

until she feels her wings pinned

by the stones of her loins, jewels

weighed heavy with love and hope.

She goes forward,

cloaked in the wonder

of the person she has discovered within

her heartache

but where her bared feet press fresh and precious

against the stones

the hard green thorns outstretch

to snag a strand

of her hard-won mantle,

she goes forward,

little realising that her garment

is unravelling

until she stands on a promontory

gazing into the future where

the wind

whispers of her nakedness.

I wrote this poem some years ago for a friend who did not envision finding herself in her late thirties divorced, poorer and the principal caregiver of her two children who were still at primary school. But I suppose no-one would ever enter into marriage or any kind of committed relationship if they could foresee that it would end badly. To her credit, she picked herself up from the wreckage and began to refashion a new and different future for herself and her children.

The poet wishes to acknowledge Valley Micropress in whose pages this poem first appeared.

Tuesday Poem: "Playing with Thomas in Hagley Park"

We are immigrants in our own country,

lifestyle refugees

frolicking in this crisp, alpine weather.

Although you’re dressed like a miniature Inuit,

no amount of padding

can hide your delight

at play in the fields of the CCC.

Thomas, you connect me to the moment,

to the real,

with your joy so palpable

that it surrounds us like an aura.

Through your eyes I discover the world anew:

how the oak bark feels with its pattern

of vertical runnels, God’s reticulation;

how leaf mounds half-dried by a pale sun

unglue and fly

when prompted by tiny basketball shoes;

how daffodils spring like magic

from the thawed turf

to be sniffed in mimicry of the kitten

in your boardbook.

As twilight approaches,

I scoop you up in mid-adventure.

You protest loudly as I wheel you slowly away from

this place of life and breath and freedom

to merge into the slipstream of choking commuters.

When you live in a city that has been bent and broken and battered and bruised by a series of earthquakes, I guess it is inevitable that nostalgia creeps in and we remember wistfully how our city was in a kinder, gentler time. My wife and I moved down to Christchurch from Wellington in July 2000 when our oldest son, Thomas, was 15 months old. We were able to fulfill two dreams we could not afford in Wellington: to buy an affordable house with some land and to live near the sea. As it says in the poem, I considered us "lifestyle refugees", but that seemed a positive thing. Now, sadly, many people are fleeing Christchurch and that doesn't seem so positive. I truly hope that Christchurch can arise as a stronger, more cohesive, more socially equitable and, if possible, more beautiful city.

Tuesday Poem: "Don't Turn Around"

(for Nelson Mandela and my wife, Christine)

“Don’t turn around,”

they said,

“or you’ll miss it.”

And now I go,

always facing forward,

thanks to you.

Sometimes heaven opens a portal

when you’re rolling low

towards darkness

and you were its angel,

bearing glad tidings.

And now

I’m home

when my children wake me up;

I’m home

to collect my two sons from their

different educational institutions of excellence;

I’m home

to prepare the evening meal

for my wife

and no stone-age sniggers

can make me feel

emasculated,

since they have no concept

of emancipation.

Tuesday Poem: "frisson"

I’d forgotten the electricity

like the heightened ritual

of courtship dance

between two elaborately plumaged birds

it’s poetry without the punctuation

it's animal but with sophistication

it's intellectual but draped with stimulation

and in the end it doesn't rhyme

Yes, I'd forgotten the electricity

but also never forgotten

and words are servants too clumsy

to serve the feeling awakened meeting you again

deep sorrow has assailed you

yet still your skin looks like ivory silk

and your eyes hold me like an idea of heaven

I wanted to kiss you full on the mouth

but who could stop at one?

Tuesday Poem: "A Long Overdue Love Poem"

Like a faded, jaded rock star,

I am living on my back catalogue,

a Brian Jones of love poetry,

desperately trying to tread water

in the drowning pool

of former glories.

Every published paean to past girlfriends

or, worse, the first Mrs de Winter

is another slight,

a creeping acid on the heart.

But you must understand

the combination of lover and writer is a mixture

fraught with ambition and frustration,

the one eager to gush the mush of greeting cards,

the other keen to be taut and muscular,

slicing through cliché

like a hot knife through butter.

The excuses are legion but not without substance.

Family and fallow or prolific and personally bereft?

Domestic details build day by day,

like layers of archaeological detritus,

burying romance like a forgotten civilisation.

But dig, I urge you,

and you will find

that in the orange-gold curls of our youngest son,

in the night-time catch-up conversations in bed,

in the bold and imaginative artwork of our oldest son,

in the simple shared pleasure of watching a video

after putting our children to bed,

in a rare night out pursuing adult pleasures,

in reading stories to omnivorous listeners at bed-time,

in answering left-field questions about marine life,

in anticipating the sharing of life-defining experiences,

in seeing our sons every day exploring

and mapping out this thing called life,

even in the arguments, the tantrums and the tears

are the pillars of gold

which hold up this temple

to the many faces of love,

a love enduring,

a love made manifest in these two fine little men

who will carry our love into a future we will never see.

Please excuse me for posting my Tuesday Poem on a Thursday afternoon, but on Monday June 13, Christchurch was hit by two more large earthquakes of 5.9 and 6.3 magnitude. I was lying in my sick bed at the time, recovering from norovirus, a gastric illness which lurks about when a community lacks adequate sewerage facilities.


But on a more positive note, I thought I would post this poem which I wrote for my wife, Christine, a few years ago. When natural disasters keep occurring to us, we value our loved ones above all else. Love poetry has a long and noble tradition, but I must confess I find love poems the hardest poems to write. It can be hard to find an original angle on love and I'm always terrified that the poem will come off sounding trite and cliched.

Tuesday Poem: "She Dances Alone"

On the high veldt

she dances alone,

singing the song that attracts the Iion,

long, slender neck that the great jaws

will break like bringing down the running bok.

In the sweet rustling savannah

she dances alone,

ululating the wounded cry that brings the leopard,

slapping the womanly hillock of her hip

that the great cat will flagrantly

tear asunder from her torso.

Fierce mother African sun

fingering the vibrant coloured beads

that slap slap slap against your daughter's

breasts, forehead, thighs and ankles

as she dances alone,

waiting to be sacrificed to the hunt.

Daughter, your mother will come

to whiten your bones

after the hyenas have stripped them clean.

And then, out on the high veldt,

her spirit will dance alone.

The poet wishes to acknowledge Valley Micropress in whose pages this poem first appeared.