Sunday afternoons
I migrated continents
to sit by your fire
look out to the sliver of ocean
we knew we could step across.
Our land-locked huddle
gradually loosened
weekly visits spread
to months
nomadic years.
Now looking out at the green bush of Wilton
I s t r e t c h
to fill the space I’ve been given.
No longer compacted into single rooms
or forced to the footpath
a pile of native creatures struggling for air.
Up here the rubbish truck doesn’t come
until after the trek to work
and up here
the silence
at night
could part seas.
Tuis call their digital tune to a distant invisible shore
ask, do you remember drifting plates?
– a subtle shift –
that slow separation home?
More Tuesday Poems here
Enjoyed this, Saradha. A delicate yet majestic reach and stretch across two worlds. A parting of seas — to return to that overpopulated pile of inhumanity? How empty and horrifically isolated NZ must seem from the other direction! Of course, it’s not land we return to in our dreamy travels; it’s memories, it’s childhood. The “digital” of the Tuis’ tune is striking (a way of reaching, like a phone call) and rhymes softly with “invisible.” Each creature, I suppose, its own invisible shores.
Oh! Thank you, Zireaux. I like your interpretation and yes, I was thinking about a kind of anti-migration whereby one moves from the populated and bustling to the peaceful/ at times empty.