Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Writing Wellington: Twenty Years of Victoria University Writing Fellows

Letter to Miss Black

page 49

Letter to Miss Black

This is the morning shift of the universe
a brief autumn sun bustles around the house
and into my corner—there are bees too
nosing into the slim trumpets of the purple sage bush
brushing my elbow
children shout faintly in the distance
somewhere a hammer pecks at its wood
a dog barks; ants secretly creep round my feet.
There'll be a woman in tears in one of the plain
painted units down the road, or
the careful bungalows; perhaps a rough bloke
having a go at her; a child squealing;
in the city a dark suit by a handsome window
will be promoting a deal;
a boy breaks his heart alone in a shed at the back
of a farm. And you Miss Black—
are you on kitchen or laundry or floors
or maybe the garden . . . did you answer him back,
the fat guard who winds you up with his lazy
smile? Did you write the thousandth
letter in your tossing dream last night
and wake to the same denial?
The morning rolls its warm body over
towards the day. Look Miss Black, we're all
history, we're the Twentieth Century,
you and I are in the programme;
trouble is, we never seem to find out
who it was wrote the script.