Poem 221

Over two hundred and twenty poems in and finally I write one about the world …

… on his way from New Zealand to Hollywood, Sam Neill made a weird and haunting Polish movie Possession which I saw in my first year in Wellington 1981 … a line from the film it’s like there’s two sisters of faith and chance reverberated with me as laying out the poles of the sliding scale we all live somewhere on – either you have faith or you believe everything is by chance …

( I love the flow here and how visual this is … single fingers of coral polyps … water so transparent it’s only a stiffening of the atmosphere … shivering acres of seedhead … the alliteration of words waving through water and peculiar pedal … and the rhyme on roe/goes/slow/own … )

The World

This is how the world goes
                                                 shining
cracked smile glittering rains
of chance and faith
                                   my heart as a coral atoll
the work of single fingers of polyps
words waving through water so clear
it's only a stiffening
of the atmosphere
                                  eyes like mice
running up stems of days to see
shivering acres of seedhead
crammed tight as roe

                     this is how the world goes
not fast not slow but at its own peculiar
pedal teaching fingers to breathe
and shoulders to burn
                                        with unrealised things