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Sport 36: Winter 2008

A Writer's Life, or, A Sackful of Spuds

A Writer's Life, or, A Sackful of Spuds

My daughter tells me that 'gullible'
has been taken out of the Concise Oxford
Dictionary. I'm amazed for a second,
remembering how St Brigid has been taken off
the Vatican's list of hits, then I come to my senses.
She laughs uproariously.
I'm amazed and rather ashamed of how easily
I'm amazed and always have been.

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Amazed how the sun slithers like a silver
fish in the cloudy sky. That a workman
setting up wire and posts for a fence
in Wellington's Central Park, lifts his head
as I walk past and says, Hi. Amazed that the chap
with the red trackpants and the old Fair Isle
jumper is still alive, swimming through
the bushes where he's spent the night. Amazed
that someone has written 'Ana's House'
in black spray paint on the wall of the ladies' loo.
Amazed that I imagine meeting up with her.
Amazed that the thrush has green metallic strips
inside its dullness. Amazed that at the turnstile
I have to push with my hip and waggle myself
through the gap, the gutter's flooded and
I have to clamber up the bank in my new red boots.
Amazed that so many pigeons are camped out
here and I'd like to touch one. I walk slowly
up to them with my eyes averted. Amazing
how it all comes back. I must be about three
and we're still living down the Valley.
My mother gives me a salt shaker and sends me out
each morning into the veggie garden. If I shake
some salt onto the tail of the lipstick bird,
she tells me, it will stop and I can grab it.
She gives me a wee cage with a perch
and some chickweed and a slice
of a Cox's Orange apple and a little bit of cuttlefish
so it can sharpen its beak. I'm amazed
and, I have to say, still somewhat ashamed
how hour after hour I'd trek between the rows
of the beans, the blue and white flowers
that look like eyes, the weight of their perfume.