For My Wife

THE DARLING BUDS OF JANUARY

 

Somewhere between Collingwood and Takaka

I watched the paddocks skim by

As you drove my Corolla -

I didn’t know then

That you drive an automatic with two feet.

 

Shall I compare thee to that summer’s day

Or simply say

That you are the Love of My Life?

And add that

I avoid watching the brake and the accelerator.

The Poetry Round

TAKING ON WATER AS I TACK HOME

 

Here at the bar, the timber looks new

Shiny, stripped back and light in colour.
I have moored my yawl on reclaimed land
And set my money down for an IPA
Here at our oldest pub, The Thistle.

As I enter, a sign claims ‘Founded 1840’

And I browse between the prints and photos
Showing the building’s sepia history,
Circumnavigating a table of bright young things -
And a dark lady in the corner.

She notices my trawling and asks

Are you interested in the past?
She brings her drink and then her hand bag over
And we sit and share a conversation
At first about the Wearable Arts Show.

Soon, we share common ground at the shore

And I remind her that the great Chief Te Rauparaha
Used to drag his waka up the muddy beach
And order a whiskey or two, while chatting to the whalers,
Yarning stories about his kids and his massacres.

Then we exchange names at which she is playfully precise:

"Hine Mahoney but you can call me Jenny -
Don’t say Maloney - don’t say baloney.
You say you are a writer, let’s do rounds of poems”.
This more or less was one of mine.

When it has come to my advantage, I call

‘The Love of My Life’ to tie the rondeau.
She responds - dreamily, insistently
"My whakapapa: for I am wāhine atua
From te whare tangata (the doorway of life).

They took our language not just our land”.
...

I chide them for her, the Founding Fathers:
The only country in the world founded
By Real Estate Agents, who divided before they grew -
Still speculating on a housing or a dairy boom.

Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black.

In the old age black was not counted fair
Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name;
But now is black beauty’s successive heir,
That every tongue says beauty should look so.

The fisherman has tide and fish to catch

The sea has beach and cliff to own
The heart breasts waves that ebb and die
Swimming deep it falters by and by
And those who grieve are oft bereft alone

Two is my limit, I’m afraid -

I don’t want to wrap the car round a lamp post.
My young sons were overwrought from
The school production and set to watch a Pokemon film
And there is a 20:20 later tonight from India.

 

 

Picking through the leaves in the South Seas

KIWI FOSSICKING

I sit at the bottom of the world, eyes strained.

Internet browsing, surveying the scene
Between my books and my fly-spotted screen -
Online - intermittently attuned.

The convenience of the South Seas!

Remoteness and its objectivity
Are of advantage to me:
The earth’s voice is open to my inspection.

My fingers are tapping on the key board.

It took years of separation
To steady my gaze, looking out abroad:
Now I hold the world in my hands.

Or let it loose to turn again slowly -

I read as I please because it is all mine.
There is no grasping in my gaze -
Only distanced curiosity.

A new at oneness of life

Directs my searches, guides my fantasies
There are no restraints on my fancies
No arguments contest my rights.

The Bay is below me.

Nothing has changed since I began.
My thoughts have permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.

 

Keith Johnson's Australasian Bestiary - the Blue Heeler

PATRICK THE BLUE HEELER CATTLE DOG

 

Bright he bounds through opened door

He’s my mate of that I’m sure -

Flashing a toothy smile for me

He sniffs my strides inquisitively.

 

A pat, he shakes a coarse grey paw -

A bowl and soon he asks for more.

Tell me Patrick ‘How’d you be?’

Watch the sofa mate it ain’t a tree.

 

Soon he’s scouting out the floor -

And at the bin for something raw.

Hold on a mo mate, can’t you see

That’s no place to cock and pee.

 

Sam you had better take your saw

You should have done so long before -

Don’t let your bloody dog make free

He’s itching now against my knee.

 

Back in the truck and close the door.

This audience is ended mate - no more.

He’s got the chops I bought for tea

And there’s a wet patch on my new settee.

 

 

Image by Graham Lees at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tram_painter/

 

Keith Johnson's Australasian Bestiary - The Tuatara

THIS IS HOW THEY ARA

Our Te Ara

It’s the be’s and he’s

Our tuatara

He’s a fossil tease.

But I will bet

Your gold tiara

You won't find

No 3-atara.

 

See: http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/tuatara/page-1

Painting by Angela Rout

The Crossing

Tuesday, September 24^th 1850 on the three-mast ship the Charlotte Jane in Mid-Atlantic, off Cape Verde, 17 days out from Plymouth bound to Lyttelton, New Zealand with the Canterbury Pilgrims

‘Thermometer at breakfast at 85 degrees in the cuddy.

Heard that a child had died in the night - it had been sickly before but, strange to say, that the father and mother, though aware of the extreme danger of the child, did not wake anyone or take any means to gain assistance till the morning. It is believed that, not even when it was dead, did they take the trouble of informing the doctor.

After breakfast, the funeral was performed and the body of the poor child, swathed in a Union Jack with a shot at its feet, was plunged into the sea.

At that very moment a huge school of porpoises appeared, playing just abreast of the ship opposite the port hole where the body was lowered down. This was the first appearance of these porpoises, and strange to say, as soon as the body was committed to the deep, they disappeared.

Superstitious people might have made have said that a troop of angels had appeared to bear away the soul of the child through the deep to heaven.

The air is fearfully hot, and the emigrants fear it greatly’.

 

THE CROSSING

 

I needed to know who you were,

The neglected and hidden child,

Borne to paradise with porpoises.

 

Nobody seemed to care.

The ship’s surgeon Dr Barker

Received 10 shillings for

Every passenger safely delivered to Lyttelton

But had to pay back 20 shillings

For every passenger who died.

Economists have a label

For this kind of arrangement –

If you write the script -

It is 'moral hazard'.

 

But there is a name

Crossed out in the Passenger List –

Bridget Maitland, aged 11.

 

It seems that she was travelling

With George and Ann Allan

And their daughter Ann Elizabeth

Aged 9.

 

And that George and Ann’s indifference

Betrayed the fact that she was an orphan

Tagging along as a shadow -

A sometimes servant

A sometimes playmate -

At the ragged sleeves

Of the family of a poor labourer.

 

But how majestic Bridget

That you should be welcomed

To the deep by heavenly creatures,

Following God’s purpose

Across Enchanted Seas

To the Land of Beulah.

 

 

[After reading: ‘The Journal of Edward Ward – Canterbury 1850-51’]

Metro Manila – the film

 

AS A MANILENO BALIKBAYAN ...

I can’t wait to see British Director Sean Ellis’ crime thriller set against the harsh dramatic setting of modern Manila. There are over 12 million in the MM region and twice as many in the wider conurbation - with as sharp contrasts between wealth and desperate povery as are to be found anywhere in the world.

Steve Rose writes in his review in The Guardian, Thursday 19 September 2013:

‘Tales of country innocents corrupted by the big city have been a staple of cinema since the silent era, but the theme is bracingly updated here, in the colourful squalor of modern-day Manila. British film-maker Sean Ellis, clearly energised by a change of scene, plunges us into this chaotic world at street level, piling the hardships of urban life upon a hopeful young farmer and his wife from the moment they step off the bus.

Within the week they're broke slum-dwellers, struggling to feed their young kids and sliding into the poverty trap. The tide starts to turn when husband Oscar lands a job with a security-van company, a development that slowly, stealthily leads the story out of social drama territory and into a crime-thriller realm. You could complain that the characters are a little thin (perhaps owing to the language barrier), but it's a resourceful, distinctive film that builds to a satisfying crescendo’.

I lived in Manila for 7 years from 1984 – 1991 and must have spent another 12 months there subsequently working on consulting assignments for my old employer the Asian Development Bank. I've seen young labourers carried dead from building sites after they fell from multi-storey projects that had virtually no work safety provisions, and naked and deranged young women splaying themselves at the passing traffic, with blood oozing from their ear lobes whence their ear rings had been ripped.

 

For all that, Manila is a city that at first seduces and beguiles with its glamour and sophistication and then, when you come to your senses and are about to turn your back and walk away, flashes a half-innocent, half playful smile that leaves you even more hopelessly in love.

 

I’ll dig out one of my poems for old times’ sake:

 

MONDAY CROSSROADS

 

The car door closes,

I step back alone

To dirty streets

And dark shapes.

 

I make my way

Warily - as

EDSA roars above

The underpass.

 

The poor bring water

To sidewalk homes

In plastic buckets

Yoked or dragged.

 

Vendors roll their mats,

Set out their goods,

Cigarettes and gum -

Trifles and trivia.

 

On a concrete step,

A dark-haired child

In t-shirt and shorts

Sleeps fitfully.

 

As dawn is rising

In the viscous grey air,

The traffic crowds

To cacophony.

 

Reddening clouds -

In the steel grey dawn

Skyscrapers emerge

In serrated edge.

 

The hotel canopy

Takes me in

Cool marble and sweet air

‘Good morning, Sir’.

 

Entering my room

There is disorder

Sheets and pillows

Thrown aside.

 

And you have gone

And with you love.

Sweet-heart stay well

As day breaks hearts.