MY VERY LATEST POETRY

Moving Into Town

Owen and Caroline moved to town
With Sascha, their tabby cat
In a traveling cage
And Zoe, the big soppy lab
In the rear of the hatchback.

They have said farewell
To their colonial dream.
No more will Owen hew wood,
Cut manuka for winter logs.
He will not stand heroically,
His axe raised shoulder high
To split the tough blue gum.

Caroline has stowed and boxed
Her spinning wheel and loom.
She will not weave again
Her homespun tapestry.
The briar and blackberry
Will overgrow her Dionysian garden,
With grass unmown, hollyhock
And sweet pea seeds unsown.

In their town house
They have a pebble garden
On a weed-mat with a yucca plant,
Carefree, austere and zen.

Zoe settled in immediately.
Home to a dog is near the fridge.
Caroline was near the shops,
Could even walk to the gym or bridge.

Sascha, the cat, tail lashed and spat,
Shot out the door and vanished
Into that alien suburbia.

Sure enough, two days later
They found her at the old homestead.
She had trekked seven miles,
Following the herds
Of migrating sparrows
To her Serengeti lawn.
She leopard lurked under
The old rhododendron bush
To ambush some unsuspecting thrush.

She was caught again and caged,
Confined to kitchen quarters
With premium cat food, litter tray
And a flea collar with a bell.

Owen, after watching Wimbledon
On the wide screen TV
With a Heineken or two,
Fell asleep on the beige settee
In the cream acrylic lounge.

He would dream his new dream
Of café life, the bistro and the bar,
Senior Citizen rates at the cinema,
A little golden oldie tennis,
Maybe take up bowls or golf.

But as he dreamt,
The tip of his tail slowly twitched
And he kneaded the cushion
With his unsheathed claws.
His vertical pupils flickered
In rem sleep in his yellow eyes.

Birthday at Oruawhare 2008

Quentin, the quentessential man,
Fifth born, what do we know of him?

Firstly, physically,
What do we know of him:
Famous for his wizardly brows;
Clydesdale tall, strong as an ox.
He once helped Gillian on a tramp
And absentmindedly hoisted her
Into the air complete with pack.
What a way to pick up girls.
He doesn’t acknowledge he is now
Somewhat diminished in stature.
He still ducks for low ceilings
And in his mind’s eye lifts up cars
To free trapped children.
Tamanuiiti, Little Big Man,
His aura still fills a room.

Secondly, emotionally,
What do we know of him?
Too tender-hearted to cull a guinea-pig;
Too thin-skinned to abide
The bickering of friends.
The kind keeper of blind dogs,
The considerate husband,
Bearer of orchid blooms,
Creator of harmony;
A neuro-linguistic anchor
In a sea of storms.

Thirdly, spiritually,
What do we know of him?
Not a great deal,
As the poker player said to the croupier.
He was raised a Christian Scientist
And still believes Richard Dawkins is God.
He would never give a believer offence,
Not even the one he’s sitting on.
He has made forgiveness an art.
Where a Christian would turn the other cheek,
Quentin would turn both
And moon his persecutors.
If he thought they were taurine rich
And low in saturated fats,
He’d even offer Martin Luther
A Diet of Worms.

Fourthly, mentally,
What do we know of him?
A voracious reader,
Often of my books;
(Please return some day!)
Conan the librarian,
He can unerringly find the needle of truth
In a haystack of verbiage.
He is an author of repute
Among discerning readers,
And a worldwide authority
On the diet of diabetes.
He clarifies the brains of students
Faster than a bucket of fishscales
In a vat of chardonnay.

Fifthly, in addition,
What do we know of him?
A pyramid has four sides, right?
Physical, emotional, spiritual and mental?
Wrong! A pyramid has five.
It also has a base.
Quentin the cinquefoil.
So you see, the quentessential man
Is more than the sum of his parts.
As his hair grows whiter by the day,
He is the pseudo-albino guinea-pig,
More than meets the casual gaze.
He is Magellan the Navigator
Steering his precarious course
Through the straits and shoals
Of medical misadventure.
He is the Wizard WYSINWYG,
What you see is NOT what you get.
He has tasted the bitter melon of life
And found it sweet.

Salome and Eric the Red

Salome big and black and comely,
Long as a table, tall as a chair.
Eric the Red was bigger still,
A Duroc boar beyond compare.
He was besotted with his mate.
If she had asked him fair,
He would have served
His own head up on a plate,
An apple in his gaping maw.
They lived in the orchard,
Returned each night to trough and sty,
To plight their troth and lie
Side by loving snoring side
In their ample bed of straw.

Above the donkey stable
Hung the wood burned label,
“We are not a mews”,
Some reference to Victoria,
The Jerusalem jenny
And Albert her consort jack,
Dam and sire of many.

Her latest foal was hillside born
Among the clumps of gorse
And shelly limestone rocks,
Where hand in little hand
The Down’s children walked
As daily matter of course
Making chains of daisy flowers
In their Holly Hobbie frocks.

Eric, ambling to the creek
For his obligatory wallow
In the watercress and mud,
Would have smelled placental blood.
He would have sniffed the foal
And perhaps his goal
Was simply to investigate.
But Victoria would have kicked
And Eric would have gored
And all was then alas too late.

We found Victoria standing bleeding
With fourteen gut rips in her flanks,
Some showing the white of bone.
Her little foal lay unheeding
Cold as ice and still as stone.

We could not blame the pig
For acting like a simple swine.
I had foreseen the evil chance.
The fault was clearly mine.
But we could not keep a boar
That could as easily gore
One small child or another
As murder a little donkey foal
And mutilate his mother.

When Salome was elsewhere
Conveniently sleeping in the sun
Or chasing butterflies,
We shot Eric just left of center
Between his piggy little eyes.
We dug a pit and laid to bed
His roiling mass of grey green guts,
His great red heavy hairy hide
And his old familiar head.

Of course we did not tell Salome
Of the deed that we had done.
We hosed down the concrete sty
And washed away all trace of blood,
Laid clean sweet new straw,
Left everything in fettle fine.
We could not alas cleanse our souls
Of that dark red dye incarnadine.

Salome returned to the sty at dusk
To look for her lifelong paramour.
Agitated, she nosed about
And immediately discovered
The plot of fresh dug ground.
She disinterred the head
Of John the Baptist, Eric the Red,
And screamed, an awful sound.
She lifted the yard gate off its hinges,
Smashed it and trashed it,
Broke her concrete feeding trough
And flung the bits around.

Retired Salaryman

The salt in my veins is the fish in me.
My ancestor in the Tethys Sea.

I look back on my life
And see a pillar of salt
Dissolving in the rain.
That is our common lot.

I was halophytic man,
I was salt of the earth.
With sweat of my brow
I earned my worth.

Life had its saline tears,
Its cuts and stings,
But the salt in my wounds
Was sharp and bright and fine.
Sugar is not living.
There is flavour in the brine.

“Ye are the salt of the earth:
But if the salt have lost his savour,
Wherewith shall it be salted?
It is thenceforth good for nothing,
But to be cast out,
And to be trodden under foot of men.”

I see young folk cavort and court,
So life for them is full of zest and tang.
Salt as such has kept its savour.
It is I who am bereft of taste,
Outcast and forsaken,
Final leave taken,
Now bringing home no bacon.

I will dry out like the Danakil depression.
Haloed by a crust of salt.
I look forward to eternity,
Floating bloated on the Dead Sea,
Uplifted buoyantly
Or come at last to halt.

Hour Glass Dogs

When I was a boy my dog was Bruce,
By my whimsical mother named,
Who read the novels of Walter Scott,
A Clumber Spaniel my father claimed,
With the poor pride of the working class.
He was really just a backyard mutt,
To a little lad though, a great fierce dog
That gave me the freedom to roam
The unfriendly childhood streets
And wander far away from home.

My wife’s first dog was Brutus,
Some tough bull terrier cross,
With a mouth hard enough for hedgehogs
And soft enough to carry an egg away
From under a broody hen unbroken,
As he nonchalantly walked past you
With chipmunk cheeks and a smile on his face.
My wife as a child would pull his tail
And stroke those self same jaws
That had just devoured a hapless rat.

I think we had old Bruce put down
Because we could not afford to feed him,
But in retrospect we could also not afford a vet,
So perhaps my poor father had to lie to me
And Bruce the firewood hatchet met.
Not so with grizzled Brutus I surmised.
He had those tumours some dogs get
And was sadly but gladly euthanized.
We turned the hour glass once around
And went shopping at the local pound.

We sought greener good life pastures new
In suburban kiwi Wainuiomata.
Our first rented house we filled with pets,
Joss sticks, wedding present fondue sets,
Me with a mo, the dogs, Bilbo and Meg
And Gill my flower-child inamorata.
Bilbo, macho tri-coloured cattle dog
Frightened posties for no good reason.
Meg, hormonally challenged black lab
Seemed perpetually in season.

Before our single hairless son was one,
Meg produced her second motley litter.
Michael pushed her suckling pups aside
To snuggle among them, thumb in mouth.
And then with Gillian pregnant again,
We had of course to return to England home
To present our offspring for approval
To the clucking grandparents.
The house was rented out, the car sold.

Leaving just the problem of the dogs.
Meg who was never more than a wet nose,
An obsequious fawning shadow,
Was adopted out with ease.
Bilbo was, despite his silly Tolkien name,
A one-man untrustworthy alpha male.
We sold him to a vaccine lab,
So that his blood would be used
To save the lives of countless other dogs.
We turned the hourglass twice downside up
And were slow to get a replacement pup.

Instead for years we boarded dogs
For friends who took trips overseas.
The first was Woodham, good at fetch and roll,
Dalmatian spotted and built on springs.
Jehan, the pure bred Pointer, who wasn’t meant
To screw the neighbour’s Rottweiler,
Nor the Poodle, nor the Giant Schnauzer
While her owners were abroad in France.
We turned the hour glass widdershins thrice.
A dog of our own could well be nice

We saw Sophie in a pet shop window,
Pointer setter cross, and fell in love
With her lugubrious lower lips.
We kept her son, Max, the gentlest dog
That ever trembled to play with kittens.
He disappeared one day and did not return
From his morning constitutional.
Poor Sophie outlived him many years.
The canine glass was tipped once more
In nineteen hundred and eighty four.

Volker Liebenow, our friend, was Deutsch.
Anke the German Shepherd bitch, was raised
By rules of Kaiser’s Canine Obedience School.
Anke, komm! Anke, sitz! Get in behind,
Du verdammte, bloede Hund! She would not obey.
Neither would our new dog, Nelson,
Our own New Zealand Huntaway.
One night we caught them worrying sheep.
The wasp-waist glass was five times spun.
The new millennium had begun.

This morning Alex hauled himself onto our bed
Like a miniature elephant seal
To have his rheumy eyes wiped.
They are glazed with blue glaucoma.
Bonny, our deaf Border Collie bitch,
Useless sheepdog free to good home,
Made two arthritic attempts to join us
On the duvet as we drank our cup of tea.
In the mirror I can see us all in a heap,
Alex, Bonny, Gillian and me.

Hawthorn Tree

In spring you are the buds of may,
Sweet-breathed from pearly teeth
From a myriad petalled mouths.
Musk muslin dressed maidenhead,
In hallowed hall where none might tread.

Yet one will scale your castle walls
And come within your crown of thorns
And kiss your ivory brow.
Bright drops from the wound that bled
Will stain the satin of your bed.

Henceforth the scarlet harlot tree,
Laden with the fruit of haws,
You will shed your summer greenery.
You will dress in gypsy Carmen red,
Girlish dreams now berried, dead.

Lolita

Little old Lolita,
Sugar daddy lollipop,
When were you first made over?
When did your childhood stop?

Dipstick lipstick, painted face,
Tinsel angel fallen from grace.
Your cheeks cherry-pop pink
Will never blush again I think.

Mascara of the innocence
And baby doll blue eyes,
When did they once if ever
Open wide in true surprise.

Do your eyes of forty lashes
Ever close in dreamless sleep,
Or do they stare at night wide open
With no more power to weep.

Wednesday's Child

Bastard born, wrong side of the blanket,
Ill conceived, wrong side of the tracks,
Born for the hangman, born for the axe.
We limp drag-legged through the wood;
Follow the trail of stale and mouldy crumbs;
Stumble awkward, fingers and thumbs.
We slipped through life's traps and gaps
Like rabbits from the poacher's snare,
To breathe the freedom of the cold night air.
They left the school-yard gate unlocked
That we might bolt to gutter and ditch,
To utter our scorn of the idle rich.
We are Wednesday's children full of woe
And Odin's ravens fly overhead
To reclaim our eyeballs when we're dead.
We come to the gingerbread house,
Bay-windowed, double-glazed and bright,
A beacon of golden warmth and light.
We press our noses to the windowpane
To see the fair-haired children play,
Blessed offspring of the sabbath day.
The girl in petticoat and pinafore
Draws her dolls' house drapes aside
To show her infants safe inside.
The boy with his ceremonial sword
In scarlet officer's coat arrayed,
Has his lead soldiers on parade.
They hear the scratching on the glass
And cry in voices blithe and gay,
"Daddy, send those awful brats away."

Annie McPhee

Cyclone Lusi came today and swept her mother’s soul away.
There was a morepork in my garden
hawking butterflies in the pre-storm gloom.
On these her Ides of March what auguries.
Our ancient apricot
sensing its terminal rot,
the fungal polypore,
the canker at its inner core,
set its last copious flush of fruit.
So her mother lay, branches drooping low,
her windfall progeny around her bed.
To move a tree, you wrench its roots
from their mycelial embrace.
She wrenched our hearts
with her preliminary dissociation from reality.
The strawberries in the potager had vanished.
Her mother was cataract blue wide eyed innocence.
“Did you pick the strawberries?”
“No,” she denied,
her old lips with misapplied lipstick
and a scarlet moko on her chin.
Cyclone Lusi came today and swept her mother’s soul away.
Her body mere spindrift spindle sticks,
chalk branches carried downstream by the Ngaruroro,
cast up among the driftwood heaps on Awatoto beach.
She had been deep-rooted
in the soil of Maraekakaho;
in her genealogy of the McPhees of old Tiree;
in her socialist principles – the only labour vote cast at Kereru,
the only strawberry moko in a field of cornflower blue.
Annie was not broken by life nor snapped off in the storm.
She was gently eased out of the ground.
Cyclone Lusi came today and swept her mother’s soul away
high into the vault and vortex of heaven
to drift down gently like a white feather
over the kittiwake cliffs of Ceann a Mhara.
In my garden among the wind-stripped leaves
is a fallen nest of dead fledgling chicks.
Today’s only tragedy.


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