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