Title: Winter Soundtrack

Author: James McNaughton

In: Sport 32: Summer 2004

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, December 2004

Part of: Sport

Keywords: Verse Literature

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Sport 32: Summer 2004

James McNaughton — Winter Soundtrack

page 182

James McNaughton

Winter Soundtrack

No good ever came
of a laugh track before lunch time.
Music, yes, or the programme
of a window
screening minutes in full-scale.

I wallow in absence,
take a Rilkean bath.
I, the tuatara building up
to blink. I, who might
have been a bird.

Ah, the dove in me, the owl
and the huia.
We watch clouds gather
with swollen udders
around the sleeping mountain.

The winter garden dreams
a homecoming, a tickertape parade.

Bleached hydrangea heads,
barely conscious pensioners
at the hairdressers,
await colour with the surge of summer.

page 183

The tap stoically endures
a bite on the nose from the hose
while the red-capped gnome does nothing.
How could it?
Forgive it. Soon enough the rain
will applaud its own arrival.