Poem 50

Geography trip in April of my last year at school … glimmering sticky a cat’s tongue – I can still feel that texture under my fingertips … ‘she’ was a practical young woman, trainee nurse … I’m not sure a rose would have worked any better …

Field Trip

In the Mangatepopo valley
we clambered up on a lava flow
only eighteen months old
      madly fissured and shrunk
the tephra light black
barbed like a cat's tongue
     wind blew ceaselessly cold
and snowless at Easter
we climbed Pukekaikiore
hill where someone ate rats
                                into a patch of sun
and lay watching grasshoppers with red inflamed legs
flick like matches
against the dark ground
       I looked at the chunk of lava I was taking
for a present sweet and sticky
glimmering cool and raw
chipped out from under
the bluenesses
                 of sky and volcano


back home she thought it was a joke 
                                           laughed
      and wouldn't take it
couldn't believe I'd brought her
                                     a rock