Between the trees
a waterfall
of
light,
a stillness
bright with bubbling springs
and birdsong.

Here you stumbled
on
that
strange intensity
by which
the tongue-tied earth
is made articulate.


First published in Landfall

Rimmed with red,
the sky emerges
from an alcoholic haze,
collapses on the shoulder of a hill.

As thin-lipped
as the letter box,
I brush a broken bottle
from the driveway:

shards of glass
that tinkle on the tarmac,
sharp as laughter
in an empty room.


First published in Bravado

The dark, drenched forest
was tinkling with tuis and bellbirds,
blind to the ledger book,
the bill of lading,
the glint in the eye of the ax.

Pious settlers wired the land for religion,
and switched on the lights.
The natives were dazzled,
but loved the portly man in the red suit
who gave them everything they wanted.

On the Historical Society outing,
we struggle for footholds
in whirlpools of organized ennui,
clutch at the slack rope
that cordons off irrelevant ancestries.

'The end is not nigh,'
the Dom-Post tells its readers.
Doors are bolted against the wind,
the tick, tick of the electric fence
around eroded pastures.


First published in Southern Ocean Review