Poem 134

An idyll, an elegy, reaching for an imaginary life … I’ve always seen this as somewhere in Taranaki … very visual and filmic I love the way the poem pulls away at the end to a super-wide aerial shot bringing everything into perspective and a sense of balance … there was some discussion I remember in our little poetry group about the combing bees out of my hair line, with someone seeing it as a sudden lurch into surrealism while others stoutly defended it as being just what happens if you ride a bike a lot – the occasional bee gets into your hair and you have to extract it with your fingers … here evening is a positive which makes a change … it’s no accident the town is flat – who’d want to be a delivery boy somewhere full of hills? …

( the flow here is great, practiced enough to achieve elegant simplicity … )

Another Life

I wish I was a grocery boy in a flat town
riding my bike against the evening
years ago
my bike with the box on the front
skidding up driveways thumbing the bell
with the same ching-ching as a shop till

I could get into that
bringing things to people every day
knowing they couldn't start dinner without me
gliding by their lives
taking all the short cuts
taking all the abuse from the kids
as the box gets lighter and the day closes down
turning down the colours

and at Christmas people would give me things
people I liked and people I hated
would hand something back to me
when they took their eggs and flour and tins
and every day I'd see them
in summer when the light went on forever
in winter when I wore a scarf
and my mother's gloves sliding through leaves
or combing bees out of my hair
with my fingers

and every day there'd be something new somewhere
a new baby a death
a big fight strange bits and pieces
of sex
and being the grocery boy I'd see it all
before the end of my run
night turning out of the day like a venetian blind
as I turn from the last yellow-lit doorway
standing up on the pedals heading for home
the white dot of the empty box waving along
flat empty streets
a town like a footprint on the plain
distant aluminium threads of rivers ...