Poem 413

This appeals to me for a number of reasons … one is the inversion of the metaphor of seagulls – the musicians I talk about are seagulls but I also compare the plane to a seagull so metaphorically I kind of get it both ways … hopefully the reader recognises the true identity of the ‘musicians’ by the end of the poem and reassesses/re-envisages  the earlier lines and images …

… the image of one inch glaciers is also very evocative for me as I would see that as a kid in Rotorua – on a frosty morning loose soil would be lifted by ice crystals (which I would crush with a satisfying crunch) … I also love the picture of the plane and boat in the same frame as it takes me back to a childhood book titled The World Of Transport the cover of which showed an imaginary scene of a highway of cars beside a train a boat and a plane, all of them forging on powerfully … I assumed this was an impossible scene until I moved to Wellington and have seen it on a number of occasions when coming down from the Ngauranga Gorge at just the right moment to catch road, rail, sea and sky full of human activity rushing towards the city …

… I also like the chilliness of this Wellington weather poem (probably a southerly this day) and the way it typifies the whole city as being a sea town but also suggests this scene might be taking place in Seatoun …

Sea Town

The street is filled with musicians
antique exponents of the nose flute
autumn writhes through the trees shooting down flowers
with clinical slugs of cold sunlight
                                                                       the musicians
hunch further into overcoats thinking of Egypt
while their noses run
a plane and a boat advance across the ocean
big boat
                 small plane like a seagull following it
for fish guts
                         autumn's scales rust and fall
the wind a widely dispersed thought of snow
of early and late ice on the puddles and one inch
glaciers raising the ground

now the street 
is deserted
the musicians have gone
                                                      flown
red cold feet and curved flutes of orange
they play for each other gobbling at the sky

the plane is gone
                                   the boat ploughs 
                                   through wave
after wave 
like a pygmy punching an elephant