Poem 121

Written in 1979 when I was nineteen in the Waikato University library up on the sixth floor or so … I had an essay due and was determined not to leave the building until it was finished … my only respite was to go out on the balcony and gaze towards Hamilton city on a grey melancholic afternoon/early evening … so I got the essay finished and also caught a poem …

( this has thematic and emotional similarities to Poem 1 written two years before … I love the image of winter as a massive landscape feature propped on his elbow (suggested by childhood book The Giant Under The Snow) … the wordplay of car-gnarled bridges and the idea of winter evoking memories/hurts that in better weather can be left behind … )

River Town Through Rain

Winter puts his elbow down
by this town
and watches absorbed the rain
and how it turns the scene around
holding his head like a shaggy stone
he lies full country length
and stares
from eyes a darkness deep
brimmed with a cold sap of ancient leaves

a steady and an unheard rain
slows this town
under car-gnarled bridges
the river noses down its easy path
and slips away
by homes that glow out embers
in grey ash of an autumn day

and as the winter breathes once
and settles
turning his tongue in every lock
I remember you and other things
that in summer I forgot