Title: Sport 39: 2011

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, 2013, Wellington

Part of: Sport

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Sport 39: 2011

Lynn Davidson

page 242

Lynn Davidson

All over the earth

Everything leads up to your heavy head.

I put my hands one each side of your round face
and tip it towards me.
You have got so tall since I saw you in Istanbul
in that yellow field.           I say

you remind me of summer

                       you say

everyone says that

and smile crinkling up your black eyes.

After a short conversation
you say I have to go

and go.

From the back you seem vulnerable.

Tall for a girl.

           Now you can reach everything
           and are more grown up then you’ll ever be again.

I can’t help thinking
that you are like a princess in a story

page 243            poised.

Your big, beautiful, weighty head above the crowd
looking slowly and searchingly

           East           West

                 East           West

Wide open spaces

You’ve read Little House on the Prairie
you know the heart’s acre when you see it.

Hidden in swaying grass the little house—
doors hinged with animal hide—secure but not fast.

You think of the girl who wanted to ride bareback
across the prairie—her hair flying loose.

You stride towards the house through grass that folds forward
like a ballerina, or a million ballerinas.

The howling wind is just
a fact of life.

page 244

For love

So determined to see you, love,
with your new Irish boyfriend
that despite my flu
I booked myself
and my car on the ferry
and then wondered around the ship

ravaged and ready to sink
my teeth into someone’s
skull (I was so sick
and feverish).
Finding a private strip
of carpet under three portholes

I lay down on my back
for an hour or so wishing
I was home in bed
then sat outside on some rusty
metal steps above
a large truck of cows

and a small truck of chickens
in crates.
I was reading Dante’s Purgatorio.
I haven’t told the full
story. A day earlier in my idiotic
fever I booked a ticket for the wrong

day and couldn’t
get my money back.
Still I persevered and booked another
stacking up my debt
my sick heart swiveling in my chest
like the panicked eye

page 245 of the chicken looking
through slats.
It was dark when I drove
to the backpackers in Blenheim
and there you were
smiling and long-limbed

your sweet boyfriend with his wide grin
and his knitted jumper from Peru.
At the falafel place
he asked me many questions
about myself which prevented me
eating my meal

although I couldn’t mind—
he was nervous and I wondered
what he saw—me red-eyed, red-nosed
a bit wild and multiplied
the Purgatorio sticking out
of my jacket pocket.

You ate your falafel
and watched us lovingly.
The soft-spoken Irish boy
who couldn’t shut up
and the mother tilted
over her plate.

Next day in the mountains
we bathed in hot pools.
A strong winter sun pulsed
on the steamy waters, remember love?
like great yellow fish.
Whales rising around us.