Sport 32: Summer 2004
James McNaughton — Winter Soundtrack
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.
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.