Hydrangeas.

The New World.

Out in the Old West beyond

Before the gangstas, but now.

Paddocks of rye and clover

Tidily fenced with six wires and

One barbed.

Willow in the lows and big night macoracarpa

Along the boundaries.

Pitiless sun.

Through a sharp gap in the dull trees

Two paddocks

One greener than the other

A big black bull stands in his own shadow

The white tip of his tail flicking.

Three Of A Kind.

Wednesday the Seventh.

A poem with a typo

That makes virtue of cliche

Hung in a small close room

With disinterested visitors

Hidden by their own perfume


Tui hits a bum note

Drunk on cherry blossom

In the park where kids on wheels

Learn of physics and pain


An old house with rotten boards

Electric saw cut teeth

Lets in new wood

Soakers, Metalex and bog

And a lick of paint.

No Title.

Spring.

The gorse is fresh and soft

Cadmium coconut petals

Not yet dry splinters

That poison the skin

And burn like a witch.

No Title.

Seal Ends.

Seal ends

Metal begins

Short change

Clatter in the wheel arch


Metal ends

Track begins

Bog down

Get out and walk


Track ends

End begins

Sharp reef

On bare feet


End starts

Tide turns

Step off

the end

The Cruel Sea.

Horizon.

The horizon is keen and bright

Where it meets forbidding land

Darkening under the shadow of sea cloud

To reverse the agreement


Silver sea and dark land

Shining cloud and lead sea.


The sharply ruled line borders

The yeasty churn of the cycles

The pull of the moon

The draw of the tide


If priest at the marriage of Moon and tide

Then midwife and pall bearer

Between Sun and light.


And a God

All encompassing

But for you alone.

8-02

17-01

Snap.

Point to point

Across the bay

A wet in wet

Wash of cloud

Grey grim over

Stone green sea

The pot o gold

Over by the wharf

Another End.

The Bowler.

Island of fat trees in the park

Branches hanging low to make a fortress

For kids and others


The trees half in half out

Scratching at the red tin shelter

For the old bowlers


Pin stripes of pee green lawn

Framed by a chalky rectangle

And a fence that would only keep an old man in

Starched and tipsy


Crumpled forms in the fortress

A dark nest for the destitute

Of cardboard and weed and drink


Warm daylit oblivion huddle

Next to the gentle clack of the jack

Until the game is over and

Hard night comes with cold lungs

And nocturnal stir and trudge till

Dawn and another end.

On A Clear Day.

Spring Light.

Shades.

Along with the bright spring sunshine

Are the cold deep shadows cast

by headlands and obstructions

To the long low light.


Not shade for the reef birds

inspecting the shore break but

a place to avoid or endure.


Not the cool refuge from summer heat

But the dwelling place for

the opposite of the expanding joy

Of the new sun after a long winter


The long season captures the shadows

With its sharp fingers

And hoards the gloom


Only relaxing its grip when the night comes

To rob the day of light

Like the tide seeping up the estuary

Mixing waters, salt with fresh to brack.


A barnacled cliff rock drips tears of delight

Into a sky pool clouded by dusk

and bright ripples enchant

as the sky darkens.

Shades.

Huia.