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Sport 36: Winter 2008

Kapiti Island

page 167

Kapiti Island

One night, I walked for miles in a line
with two friends and seven strangers; paparazzi
chasing a celebrity bird.

The tussock scratched
ankles and shins, and I caught
the ghost cry of a strangled child
quick flash of oars on the water—
no matter. We plodded on
to where the manuka grew thick.

Nothing but breath and the scrape of feet, but still
they didn't show, these shy, blind birds, calling out
as though they had lost one another for good.

We turned around
and fell asleep with that same cry in the air.

Sabine found evidence, two feathers;
left them for the girls weaving flax on the floor.
In exchange we were offered
a paper nautilus—
thin as eggshell, white as the moon—

and Ralf (who never believed it would last)
carried it back for her
sealed up in a margarine container
safely over the breaking sea.

page 168

Letter

Love, we have finished.
Eaten one another's bones,
consumed the kidneys, the liver, the spleen.
We have picked our teeth
and dusted our hands.

Yes, all the books agree,
the history is concluded:
the nights we lay too dumb to speak,
the flutter of hands between wake and sleep,
the shouts and demonstrations,
the tanks rolling down the street.

You have removed the hair from the tub.
I have disposed of your razor and comb.
The shoes have been thoroughly scrubbed.
The names are gone from the phone.

(So if at night
the pillow assumes the shape
of your back
and the tomcat sounds like your
cry—
I will think of this as
a ghost
a residue
my own private matter.)

page 169

Four Reasons to Come to Scotland

Arthur's Seat
Because I'm in love
with the idea
of you and me
walking around Cat Nick
over the Hawse and down
the Gutted Haddie:
how we would loll
in a small hollow
amongst gorse and stinging nettle,
with crows breaking their voices
on the rocks above
and you would say
crikey
and I would say
worth it,
don't you think?

airpoints
Because some bleak day in winter
when the sea is iron and the faces of men
and women close over like mussell shells

you can fly to Samoa
for nothing, wear pink lavalavas for a week
each day place fresh
bougainvillea in a small glass
jar in your room.

page 170

old bones
Because you can go home
to a place you never knew.
Drive one afternoon the long road up to Luss
with the loch on the right
the sunlight cutting in
at the particular angle it always has.

There will be
a post office
a coffee shop
a tall white house on the crest of the hill
but no further information.

Go down to the shore.
If the distant static of the long-since dead
is drowned out by the crash of rain on the lake
run back across black soil
that you want to reach down and bury your hands into.

solstice
If you come
we'll go
to a movie
an opera
or (if you're quick)
final match
of the World Cup.
At midnight
walk back
from the pub
or theatre:

astonished at the sky
still fading and fading.

page 171

Grandmother

When I was five
you taught me how to separate an egg.

I watched you tap it on the rim
of the bowl,
press your thumbs to the spot
and crack it clean in two.

You let me take the speckled shell
in my own hands
and rock the yolk back and forth,
quivering
as it slid from one half to the other,
a tiny yellow sun.

We put the splintered pieces
in the brown bin
for the compost

and the empty carton
in the red bin
for the incinerator.

In the garden,
the light went out of the golden elm.
We stood at the window.
The moon was a white cup.

The birds had gone to their nests, you said
and tomorrow would be a good day.

I spread my fingers on the dark glass.
Our cake, you said, would rise.