Poem 458

I hadn’t even been to Australia when this was written … so in some ways it’s about my earlier failure to launch, fear of being out of my comfort zone, not knowing where I belong due to not having anything to compare to, feeling my grasp on myself as tenuous and in danger of being overwhelmed by a wider world … as it happened, when I finally crossed some seas I found the differences were primal and visceral including light sky and air …

( The image of NZ as a lizard recurs from Poem 62 … I like wrongheaded tides and backwards weather … the stretch of the country from sub-Antarctic to sub-tropical, almost-rhyme of palms/salmon, the keys and locks and double meaning of locks in regard to rivers … and the final image of me like an animal marking and physically attached to its territory … )

The Sky

I wondered if in other countries
the sky is a different colour
air has a different quality

I have never stood flown or swum
in anything not this country this lizard's ridge
out of the sea
                            never different dust never faced
wrongheaded tides and times backwards weather
I'm held here in these lines on maps in these
magnetisms
                         birds whirl round me sub-Antarctic
islands and palms salmon
flashing back their bodies'
muscular keys
                              into the locks of rivers

still I stay
                   snuffing the air
                rubbing my throat
against mountains wondering what home is
afraid I couldn't find it
                                           again