June 2013

wintry night —
streetlights overlap
shapes of me

all at sea
a lone pigeon maps
the way home

listen!
the sound of grapes
being crushed

swaying reed —
the flutemaker reads
a closed book

after dusk
in a muskrat's wake
primal slime

dawn breaks out
in tongues of fire . . .
frosted earth

breathless dawn —
a mosaic of leaves
lighten up

late spring . . .
a bull snuffs out
the flowers

winter storm —
the sound of one colour
blowing still

icy veins . . .
the wind parts a way
to the deep north

the wind darkens
within my listening —
longest night

polar storm . . .
a taste of darkness
without end

on the living
and on the newly dead —
wintry rain

stormy night . . .
rain sounds flay me
bit by bit

bitter wind . . .
the suburban totems
leafless at last

livid sky . . .
a river narrows
inwards

all day rain . . .
darkness now soaks me
to the skin

winter rain!
is this the rhythm
of a death poem?

how absurd!
a pukeko alone
voices it

across the valley
drift ancestral voices;
with each rise and fall
of her still sleeping breast
moonlight enters my breath

in silence
in the gap between breaths
. . . a fantail

a parson bird sings
in both the present
and the past . . .

funeral vigil . . .
eternity yawns between
each 'Hail Mary'

prism break . . .
red white and blue leaks
through the cracks

blowing itself over the sea,
there's no place for winter wind
to go back

greyscale dawn . . .
the yesterday forgotten
again today

the wet dreams
that fall from wind-torn leaves —
a young night

lengthening shadows . . .
an undertaker moves
under a plantain

autumn coda . . .
a reverie of paw prints
across her briefs

misty rain —
a branch dripfeeds
my ears