Poem 299

True story … a ‘name’ poem (last one) written for White Cloud … in that show about New Zealand culture I decided to avoid any war stuff which I felt had been (exploitatively and sentimentally) hammered to death in terms of defining our identity, instead I wanted to make a point about the ongoing attrition of the peacetime generations on our roads and how we (with some kind of perverse pride) set that as centrepiece and core definition of how we see ourselves as a nation … but even terms such as the ‘road toll’ are so threadbare and overused as to have become meaningless so in this poem I wanted to talk about the wounded not the nice-and-tidily dead, about the ongoing ruin which if it’s not your story is so easily elided …

… I could be talking about Rebecca here whose motorbike accident at fifteen inexorably over the next forty years took her quality of life and then her life itself …

Brendan

Brendan was more the friend 
                                                     of a friend
I think a year older too
he always seemed to have his helmet 
in his hand loved 
his Yammy 350
he must have been sad 
to smash it up when he hit 
                                                that bus 
I remember making a joke about him 
trying to get in the back door 
without buying a ticket

                                          I didn't say that 
to Brendan
I didn't say anything 
because he was in hospital 
                                                 for months
pretty much an entire 
teenage lifetime
and I'd forgotten about him by the time 
I went home with my friend one night

my friend's mum was still shaky
she said there'd been a knock on the door 
someone standing there said hello
she was just about to ask 
who or what he wanted
when instead she heard 
herself say 
                    Hello Brendan

it was such a close thing 
                                            she told us
she was so pleased 
she recognised him 
because he was 
                              unrecognisable