Poem 67

From the first half of Folio # 2 … I left my Reserve Bank programming job just as I turned 23 and devoted three months (up until Christmas of that year) to writing full time … I kept regular work hours Monday to Friday in the lounge of my flat in Hataitai and wrote a short story every week and a poem every day – twelve short stories and sixty poems …

( I like the rhythm of this … the way the rhymes fall … how it swings into closure at the end … )

The Late Guest

Spring missed the bus
entirely
and winter worked double time
the sun's roots stay warm
far beneath our feet primed
to thrust fire up the blue stem of sky

summer comes in late
the long-expected guest
apologies confusion
the wrong address
he sits at his old proffered place
and eats hugely heartily
no thought of waste

he will have everything by the meal's end
his thriving hands and jaws
make sparrows of all the others
but for amends
he repays with ranks of days sun-heavy
sanguine brothers
shoulder to shoulder
grazing the ticking hay