musick point

musick point
june 2010
musick point, auckland

Where the radio waves were unscrambled… picture by summer day in a camera

the wireless
air-sea-rescue tower
filled with antique
equipment i wondered
at as a child
knobs dials men
working there with
logbooks conversations
crackly on the air
now unstaffed
no ear tuned for
ship or plane
distressed in storm
for enthusiasts only
restoring it
all entry by
appointment

gardens a tidy
unkemptness
the flowerbeds
are filled in
with turf
blackbird thrush

waitress

waitress
30 october 2022
With thanks to the poet Victor Taylor for reviving the notion on which this was based, 40 something years after its conception.

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Édouard Manet, painted 1882; image sourced from Wikipedia.

serving in that cafe….
fourty something years
i left her to lean across tables,
since first i thought her
on an afternoon, the hem
of her smock against thighs
stockinged in glow, a line
of unforgetfullness, her skin
the barest pouring of touch
for she was fully imagined as
eternal self, the soul watching me
as i watched her across tables,
her thighs sketched through linen
smock, seeing her a busy, bustling
body only, rustling its starched dress
as she went to lift my plate
away, saying, “i see you’ve
been watching me for a divine
revelation, like buttons come
undone’, i smiled the best awkward

in dream

in dream
to Marco, poet and translator of Dante
14 june 2013, revised 24 march 2022

‘Plato’s Academy’, the fresco by Raphael, painted circa 1509 – 1511; image sourced from joyofmuseums.com

you wrote
you’d dreamed
an owl came in
on a wave
of wing
through the
window opened
to star and field
to land in
a shock on
your shoulder,
told me
you’d met me
in dream, nothing
like i look in
that distant picture
of myself knowing
i never have managed
to resemble my own
image even in
mirrors,
your mother was