Poem 126

A very Wellington poem, the waterfront now still perfectly recognisable …

( I like oxygen rolling wheels through our hair, the cranes picking yellow delicacies – and nailing that self-important walk is one of my great descriptive successes … also the poem flows beginning to end and that ease of expression is not to be underestimated – that’s what all the daily/nightly effort, the thousand poems before it, the five-finger exercises, were all about … )

The Story

Let's find the story
that can fit us
                look in the water
under the wharf
for our black reflection

they keep rebuilding the days
floor upon floor of air
decorated in gulls
oxygen from South America
    rolling wheels
through our hair
                  smoke
on the seaward horizon
                           but that's not our story

finish with me
what we started
don't walk off in the middle
      with that self-important
      walk
      you've got
and I'll give you an end
find a story with the right
attachments

on the wharves the container cranes
   two storeys high
pick yellow delicacies
                         the sea springs up the wall
and falls back in pieces
we walk up Oriental Parade blown together
looking for an ice cream