The shed with the then ‘spattering tap’; the ground is still in use. Photo by Little Cat.
just boys wanting to drink sweet water
it was a primary
interschool rugby match
i hated getting up a
saturday morning in
the dark for this
put out on the silent
wing no-one ever passing
out that far each and
every boy bound for
his own leather glory
felled soon on the grass
this morning
on the side of
ohuiarangi* and
its stand-over pines,
that tap
the only one
a boy had died my father told me gulping down too much cold water in the heat of a match
checking in
for aeons
here,
the early*
one,
saying
her looks
are
ageless
doesn’t
even touch
it,
first
shy at the
dark counter
until she
smiles,
we put
her up
in the sea
and sky
suite and she
tells us in
lingering how
she loves to
watch
the stars
die down
as she draws
the muslin
round her
and sleeps
atop
the day,
in what club
she spent
the night
we never
ask,
she
hums
to
herself
a glimmer
on her
lips,
remembering
the dance floor
a world away
where
the boys
the girls
she gives
the glad eye
will know
her as celestial
riverside
march 2020
*More usually anglicised as ‘Eos’ from the Attic Greek, in Homeric Greek Ἠώς ‘Ios’, the goddess of dawn in Greek mythology.
From Wikipedia: ‘Eos fell in love several times. According to Pseudo-Apollodorus, it was the jealous Aphrodite who cursed her to be perpetually in love and have an insatiable sexual desire because once had Eos lain with Aphrodite’s sweetheart Ares, the god of war. This caused her to abduct a number of handsome young men…’
*Another Homeric epithet for the dawn, Ἠριγένεια (Iriyenia), the early born.
answering
the wish the questions
those around you put
costing all your gathered
silence to answer
you stop like a
daylight scene worn
through with memory
shifted into the moon’s theater
becoming doubt
in its shadows.
you listen for your
own sound
the dark avenues
your waking takes you from
your dreaming under the Continue reading “a self”
Ruru ki Te Ruru 