The migrant returned to New Zealand again
(for Sophia van Delden at 75)
"without stirring abroad, you can see the whole world.
Without looking out the window you can see the way to heaven."
- Lao Tzu
After all the journeys
starting and departing and beginning
again, you are here on another passage
finally in your own harbour
at home, the sea also
a creature of arrivals
always on the move
living with stories
and seasons
ageless in memory
where all time is now
and shelter
an open space
Fisherman at Castlecliff
'Like jogging on the spot,' he reckons,
pulling his skiff into the breakers.
An arctic explorer on a sledge
disappearing into that shook silver
blueness. A longline barbed with hooks
wedged in the bow. It runs
towards Easter.
Three gulls cry overhead
their flight writing the sign of the cross.
In the distance
Taranaki watches in silence.
Already it has seen too much.
Blue
This blue has nothing to do with darkness.
It is Arabian Nights remembered from childhood,
the sky watching the Nile in fairy tales.
It is mystery of mountains
so far out of reach and high they can only be imagined
dwelling in deeply dark waters
lambent with that passion angels revere. In their light
gold mantles of blue they enter now
the magic imaginings
floating between sea and sky - that space
where all the world's blues
sing electric.
Blue Window
To hold the sky
in your hand for just one moment
as though your heart would break.
All that devotional blue
swirling the 'Oh!' out of breath
promising such a morning
- roofs of mosques
stretching their azure curves
voluptuously,
a mountain
startled into purity -
in these heavenly vapours
of air.
Always the knife
glinting on the blue table.
Ghosts coming to wound
in poems writing themselves
as fragments of pasts
that are never other than now
always
(still)
shaping,
putting the point
to that hollow where life pulses.
The sky is breathtaking
blue. Clouds out of focus
feathered with rain.
Small consolations.
Waitakere River Valley
for Derek March - painter
I.
Lost, you say, the songs of the forest
where the light never shone and listen
to the wind remembering adventures
through trees smothered in liana.
See how the water flits over stones
and all the colours of darkness suddenly
speaking. The currents swirling
in great swathes of sound.
Clouds make a choir
rolling their sadness through a sky
heavy with rain and mist.
Where the sea curves and breaks inland
spirits roam in the drift of waiata
shivering through bones of trees
dank with grief.
II.
Hills hunker down and slide
into the bellies of eels excavating
sites older than winds finding no resting
place in the remembered past.
Silver slips into the light
clouds glimpse flowing through water
searching out landscapes
furrowed with sorrow and loss.
Morning Glory
The neighbour's out
with his binoculars.
He's having a good time
watching the birds.
This one's in the shower.
I lean out to open the window
wider. Let out the steam. His.
I wave. My boobs dance delighted
with such abundance. He fumbles
to adjust his focus. I shout him
'joy of the world!'
