Gesticulations
Regardless of which muscle
pulls what bone
choices have to be made.
The sky always knows its place
and swirls down a funnel behind the shed
The moon and stars
sparkling like full offertory boxes
drop in too.
or pays attention to the length of my stride
I count the number of heartbeats
the earth pounds in my ear every minute. Walkers pass
glance up into the living matter of my face, hot-cored at the centre
and capillaried in feeling. The Esplanade is full of men sitting in clearings
on logs, on rocks, in tubes of sunlight. They drink from plastic bottles
share scraps of edible treasure. They kick up leaves
pink blossoms, gravel. They gesticulate what they want, which path, who leads.
Our footsteps talk. Who chooses the patterns for the trees
or draws clouds
dive-bombing the lagoon.
interferes with the hunger
playing in their skeletons.
have built their Golgotha
Native born …
he tests the morning air
with a finger
refers to my thin armour
as his house
is happy to let himself
walk in my shoes.
Before we visit the ruins
he tells me no one
of significance lives there
or eats spuds or carrots
kills the birds
which eat the fruit
the sweet fat bugs
which hollow the trees.
The coming of the horse,
cow and chainsaw
changed all that
the savage offspring
of a dead English mother
changed all that.
No one of significance
rolls down the aisle now
marrying similar skins.
No one thinks
to rebuild the tabernacle
in ruins.
He picks what he likes
to look at.
Music fills the blanks
between the cut-down
narratives of old storytellers.
It rises and falls
amongst the morning’s
chants, the man on his roof
talking to the sun, the woman
at her fire cooking,
the children spinning their tops
their songs whirring
in the dust. The future
is about smaller paddocks
squashed-up streets
houses packed
with too many arms
and legs.
He chooses what he wants
to show me, tells me
it’s safe now to go further afield
pretend the scene
is coated in chrome,
marble is the rock to stand on,
that the savage offspring
of a dead father
is of no consequence
any more. He compares me
wrongly
to a blood companion.
A Winter’s Incursion
I do as I want.
I watch the sky lean down
Apples cling hard and green.
Blackberries
claw at paths.
A woman on the veranda
hears spring cracking
through tunnels of foliage.
She hears the fingernails
of blossoms
scratching.
A kotare scoops tracts of estuary
for fish. The sea
plays on my sunglasses
and like a shadow
the woman crosses dark maps
of countryside
unspoilt by languages.
She has become a landmark
I can’t quite touch.
She comes inside
begins to pick up, put down –
rocks, shells, the skeletons of plants.
She is deferential, detached
related to the sea
for us being here.
She’s a stranger wanting contact
sustenance, a taonga
wanting to be seen
She pauses for me
as we step out onto the grass
to the flattened bodies of storms
a winter’s incursion.
I do as I want.
I choose
to give her reassurance. So many homes
like broken gifts seem to want us.
