'Bonefire on Kapiti Island' and Other Poems

Bonefire on Kapiti Island

The mainland is rendered down
silvers and is gone.

My heart is green and raw - a pea not a heart -
front to the fire back to the wind.

The groan of stone on stone unsettles
me as I unsettle them.

A passing orca's generator heart opens
and closes the island like a door.

Behind me green bush is a swaying glossary
I could lose myself in -

leaf bird tree feather bone
rock punga pebble koru stone

bone-fire oil-lamp song
heart gale right whale wrong



Inside Kapiti Island

It's no use turning my head aside now - this is what I wanted
to be inside the island inside its green puzzle

so this empty house with its stroke victim slump
is history - press in

the brown-edged rhododendrons with their sharp, glossy leaves
the freesias so sweet in the half-shade they suggest their own decay

press them in. Make a daybook of yesterday. Note how the island
absorbs the house, the garden, into its dark, vegetable centre.

But I want to say is this your freedom?
And why would you live here? Would you live here?

And how would you make differences in the repeating days?
And who ...