Moeraki Heritage
how many tides since our last visit?
I open the sand with my heel
attempt to unearth its secrets
as sun breaks the cloud
beside Fleur’s place
from here, the boulders
are clay eggs
dropped by an over-sized bird
In Ireland, the Giant causeway
looks connected to the coast
stepping stones to God & Darwin
children take measure at arms length
trace cracks in the shell
tell me they’re hatching
a baby dragon
I’m touched by the unexplained
the canvas of blue on blue
how many generations to come?
I leave my footprint, dissolving
in the sea
Immediacy is everything
All my life my mother was happy
with the present. There’s no use
burying yourself in tomorrow
she would say, I’ll live till I die
choir meetings mingled
with the beat of the marching team
although her grandchildren refused
to line the streets & clap
she would fill herself with flowers
narcissus of early spring
tend them as she did my father
watering, feeding, kissing them into life
his old spiked boots in the oval plot
a double-petalled primula hugging the laces
the months before she died, she sent letters
immediate as Sappho’s poetry
she talked to my father’s shadow, asked him to
be patient, she wasn’t ready yet
she found joy in a bunch of weeds
in the pattern of forest trees
her written lines became a child’s
hand, a black scratch at a page.
