Composing a poem for dad, for me
Composing a poem for dad, for me
For my sadness, the tui, bright and flashy
as a black diamond
doesn’t care.
Preludes rising like your joy
and diving into anguish
Sometimes the Hutt breaks its banks in grief
and its tears anoint statehouse porches
Othertimes you see it has lazy acceptance in esses
You see it confined, know it swathed stones once, forming
this valley
We sensed your restriction pulling away at the covers and
tubes
And things they said for your own good
Mum dreamed of you at her back imitating her S shape in
sleep
I wake with Chopin aching three mornings
The left hand is the carrier and the right plays its own
tune
Mum woke and thought you were there
The right hand clasping left, her own.
And there you are in the lament of right and wrong in my
brothers,
the song, a great oneliner, an empty lazy boy and lifeless widescreen
We wound up following the Hutt River to that field where
earth says welcome
Black granite, cold as dark suits, stabs up out of the
ground
My friend Hugh tells me that the Books of the Dead tell what
it’s like
My family like the idea that Christ himself mentioned
No inkling here so far, though faith be our torch with which
we look
-except for the Monarch against the white hearse and
again, like a lolly against Mt Holdsworth fair and stark,
sheeted and silent
