“Light Letters”

Our letters travel at the speed of light,

leaving us no time to think,

to wait, to wander, to watch,

stretch our eyes until they’re bloodshot

keeping a lookout for the postman.

 

They are not weighed down

by longing or absence

and I am scared relationships

cannot outlast such

warped-speed communication.

 

Like that candle burning

at both ends it will be bright,

but we only need dim light

to see each other and I want

so badly for us to last the night.

 

Again, it comes down

to faith and I just pray

that my words, this poem

burn a little longer so that one day,

I will be able to follow the light home.

“Lost and Found”

I found a poem today

sitting in a secluded bay

as the sun dipped between

the clouds and the Coromandel:

a drop of butter spreading

on the hot slip of ocean

separating me

from the mainland.

 

Life is a poem,

all we have to do is

string together the lines

and sometimes it rhymes

and sometimes it doesn’t.

Sometimes it fits and

sometimes it sticks out like a jagged piece of rock

in an unforgiving ocean.

 

Any civilised measure,

any beat other than my heart’s

has no place

when confronted by a sunset

and a rocky blue bay,

with a breeze rustling the page

so that even my handwriting

resembles the rugged island.

 

I asked my dad how spiders spun

webs across gaps far wider than them.

The answer, he said, is blowing in the wind.

I hear it now, washing in with the waves,

forming perfectly smooth stones.

It isn’t written here though.

I left it in stingray bay,

where it belongs.

 

The sun has set now

and it is time to leave.

But go to that quiet bay,

look next to the pile of rocks

on a warm summer’s day

and you may find it still,

traced into the changing sands

by God’s forgotten hands.

“My God”

God is a different colour here:

green and grey,

less dramatic,

made up of different names

which are more lyrical

like Rangitoto and Matutapu

and Piha, as if in celebration,

exclamation of another happiness.

 

The expressions are foreign

and the colours different,

but a rainbow looks the same

driving along a volcanic plateau

so that the seven stripes

run with the rain,

making a ridgetop catch alight

in green and yellowred flame.

 

God is a different colour here,

but that a god exists

is unquestionable –

the burning mountain proves it.

Such deities do not interfere

or guide our chaotic lives.

God waits to be found

in foreign sounds and new sights.

 

There is no book which describes

my multi-coloured god.

No combination of words which

convince me of my cohabitation

with the divine.

There is just my pencil,

a rainbow-melted hill on fire

and miles to go before I sleep.

“Hopeless Wanderer”

He walks out, a lonely strandloper

looking for a poem,

picking up broken pieces of shell

like bits of words

to be built into a golden dune,

or so he hopes.

But dunes take time and rhythm

and repetition of the tides,

moved by the moon.

And repetition of the waves

turning him inside out

to the shattering of shells.

 

His cloudy companions

watch closely overhead

contemplating silence

as he gazes at the greyblue sea.

A dead penguin appears and

he stops,

mortified by the modern world.

But it could have been old age

and uncertainty appeals

for here lies every blackwhite bird,

all penguindom in a line,

washed onto a lonely bed of gold.

 

The beach explodes in trails

around mysterious holes,

dug out by ghost-arms

which scuttle away to

the vibration of his steps

seeping through sand.

He can feel solitude shaping him

like pebbles, solace-strewn on the strand.

Having reached nowhere in particular,

everywhere at once,

he turns to face the wind

and walks back home.