Three Poems

Summer Table

An elbow bend of olive wood
on three dry-stone piles,
my south island table's dowelled,
planed smooth, old island style.

I've built Romanesque dove-holes
on its short side for icons - ten
vertebrae intact, two goat skulls,
journals, shells, imaged favourite men.

Daily, work's done on its long limb
below this chin-high open window.
Outside, half-light gybes this mountain
till its rocks seem a mountain of roe;

chorus-girl gulls string their cliff shore;
a ragweed patch goes tangerine
and riffs of goat bells peal the air
...