I check the dog for fleas
It's all in aid of a clean start
since the resolution thing
has no appeal - probably
because of past failures.
Bidding adieu to garments
worn to comfortable soft friends
sulking in squashed boxes,
a handbag, the rice cooker I don't need -
it's for a microwave and
I have no microwave now.
It went at the last clean start
when I fretted over stuff
in it that could harm
more than when I used it.
That's what it's like.
Life. Worrying about
your wisdom afterwards
always afterwards.
So I check the dog for fleas
wash her bedding
bathe her, groom her
think future for her.
My new calendar I corset in birthdays
and enter the command, each quarter:
Flea/Worm Dog. It dawns on me
I love no-one born in May.
KL to AKL
It seems that mothers have a need
the man beside me agreed
to feed you -
his Malaysian
mine English -
eighty-somethings
stuffing their sixty-somethings
sending them
homeward carrying
gifts of bellies' excess
great burdens of their need
to feed you do
what mothers
feel a need to
On finding an immature cone at the tip of a fallen pine branch
I sit on the fallen trunk, watch
you and your small hatchet
beat hard pinecones off
and hold a dimpled, nipple-like
erect soft aubergine bulb of a thing
that could sit in the cup of a tongue
I watch your mouth
the way you hold it
in that tight concentrating way
sometimes the wet pink
tip of your tongue
pokes sideways out
stroked by tree-breeze
our third age antics
buoy and amuse me
we hold hands
we pull and heave together
drag our sack to the car
A Joke
At the Library I get side-
tracked by A Good Handful
NZ poems about sex.
As if to approve
the coffee machine orgasms
"Ouch, it's hot" huffs a woman.
I press my book flat so no-one
no-one can see its title.
I enjoy the sex - poems, that is -
subdue my smile; the women
one sipping, one silently reading.
A stubbled man biased on one
buttock caresses Sports Jokes 2
but the jokes don't do it
as far as I can tell
and I press the thin book down.
Coffee woman sips 200 Garden Plants
the other's volume too weighty for sex
flat on a sensible lap
yet a sweet expression, her tongue
wets her lips, her chest rises
and falls, shocking pink with pearls.
I laugh at the sex. They glance up.
My book funny.
fleeting
fantail fast
above a chair back
small black crown
surprised boot-button eyes
and gone
Mother declares my
visits are so scarce
she wonders was I
there or did she
imagine it
I wish for a glad shy
brown-oiled girl
to call the soft curl
of a name
reclaim her child
but there's no such song
I long to hug
my mother
