The Blue Lake
Stood on the shonky pier
looking into so much blue
mineral water, the
Hawkdun Range upside down
I remember the lake
was made by
gold diggers who ate
away the hill. A look
into this mining hole is
dredging history. The
the drum of shovel, bucket
the big sky and tussock
for visions.
When they left, the
lake filled with water.
It still fills, is a scarred
dreamscape.
In dry hoar frost
the dams freeze
so tumbledown walls,
mine shafts
are naked again.
As the moon rises over Old Man Range
it plates these monuments to greed
where no one should live.
I read this lunar writing. It says,
only eels never swam from here.
Only solitude is bigger than memories.
Rangi
Among the remoter facts of geography
a footprint is most moving.
When our landmark rose from sea
the kid stopped his grizzle
the dog forgot its mange
chiefs thought of their canoes
and paddling like hell.
As the pelicans left, we said
nothing. Curs yelped all night
made us curse them.
At dawn earth shook
slung fizzling rocks into the gulf
sun was smeared out
clouds became soot.
Ash snowed on us
cold, wet, snowing for days and weeks
our irises exclamation marks.
When fogs cleared, looking
over land that wasn't there
a war season ago, our toes
dug into ash.
Among all fire deities
this new land demanded place.
Sea monsters swam for it
channels were blur, sea-routes
lost. For a decade it belched
smoke, like the beast's mouths.
I've read it all in the ash-block footprints
of this man, child and his dog.
My ink retraces their steps.
Dwelling
Three generations stay in
my house. The air crackles
with memories
the forgiven, and what cannot be
bob like a cork
in seething silence.
Time has been misremembered
by skirting-boards, shins of the house
kicked in
webbed cornices, so
imaginative blotches
may mean something, or not.
A rotten dentistry of beams
hold the roof
doors screech arthritis, window
casements aren't all there,
and the shouldermarks of the dead
shine.
It's a chemistry that
split timber
generations before
but has scabbed now,
where I'm lashed to a desk
pitted by adventure,
overgrown with scrawl
coffee rings and history.
Creation
on which my elbows dream
make these bitten, inky fingers move.
Excavations
Where coast bulges like a dug into Southern Ocean
only gods and listeners to the sea come.
Obsidian hills riddled with creeks
no roads have ever been here
sand gums the tissue of lives
wind skeins six centuries.
These mooring stones
are pensive places to walk
and scribe the shore with a boot.
At Bull Creek butchering knives
stab from sand. You can snag
stone fishing lures,
inhale mussel midden.
I have stood on these low dunes,
made of my arms
a wind-bitten compass
to salvage some past.
The booming calls of moa
maybe quieted, but gales
excavate their throat-bones.
Every dune prizes its killed moa
left where slaughtered.
And red ochre for war
still bloodies this surf.
Commemoration
Wild flowers sow on the blood and bones.
It is muggy. The eucalyptus mask
smells, bandage a fly epidemic
and the dead don't give a sod
for broad harbour views, or hills
shoved up closer than December weather.
Go by mausolea like show houses
and feel the tenants' inhospitality
walk into neat avenues
where you can stroll over the dead
over grave weed, cracked funerary art
that shall not be forgotten
and try to commemorate the names
weathered away.
I muse if the dead, irked by
their fresh neighbours
with their showy photos, garish posies
elbowing in on their land
have the wisdom to know
dirt is the final solution.
Dusk Music
Rain drowns cows in this country
seeds the dung earth with thunder.
Mountains have brash tongues
sliding runic hands into dreams
hills with the girth of whales
glint like scaled fishes
and the sea's gone for good,
never coming back. Birds skim
astonished spaces.
The yearbook written here
makes a visceral slash of creeks
clouds into fantastic red dragons
while sun bleeds its apocalypse
one last time.
Shadows, like the bruised flesh of the dying
stretch long digits of dark
on us.
Snowflakes
are precious, edible
crystals that
prize skulls, flutter
into nostrils.
Only wrinkles melt them;
snow dusts the sepulchres
of those that sleep.
Teeth marks of gales
sink fangs in your eyes
so there are no lies,
walking beside rail tracks
by firs, snow burying
all the word spaces.
I look up at white stars
falling onto creased faces --
they settle a veil in your head
fuzzy like misremembered history.
Eyes blur, wet-
snow chisels silence
colder than pogroms,
gauzing pain with amnesia.
I have make this linen-white writing
so it will never melt.
Dirt Music
After decades of repetition
this long land is always the same,
hoed by too many hands.
Dry fig trees and creeks silt
under the sun's bloodied fingernails.
In low places clay and memories collect
for this earth's sealed shut,
a mud age blooming
blood petals.
How the starving hills
are like stones tossed at the sea,
accusing digits of dusk raking over the
fog swaddled valleys
so only a hideous love stays me
from my ancestors' bones.
Turning the soil here
is moving sad old headstones,