Tuesday Poem – The cat teaches me about death

Not by killing or through her own fragility

by bringing in lizards from the garden.

Play things. Hidden under the rug

she gives them away

with her sniffing interest.

Mostly I coax them onto the dustpan

to carry gently outside. Or I find them later

dusty in corners and stiff.

Heads curled under

tails missing

light.

So light the breeze takes them

before I make it to the rose bush.

Tuesday Poem – 1987

In my performance-best dress of blue gingham, lace trim and full-frill, my hair brushed and cheeks flushed, I scratch at my violin (I only know one tune) to a full room in June on the other side of the world. A fat blue sponge is my shoulder rest and coloured stickers guide my fingers sharp or flat.

My brother watches and shooshes, as I did when he stood. Poe-faced, he read a poem from home and we all laughed at the quardle-oodle-ardle the wardle and the doodle. But his recitation had such conviction and a concert means we’re leaving soon.

We’ve been the only children for miles in this bleak Birmingham borough, this house full of Quakers and travellers. And perhaps in this whole country, where school is punishment, school lunch detention, and singing on the bus not allowed.

We’ll be six and eight forever in the photos we took. Sitting in train stations, standing by landmarks, pointing beneath street signs of places we’ve been, places we’re headed, and those which remind us of home.

Now we must pack our souvenirs: buttons and badges from the British Museum, T-shirts of Buckingham Palace, of Postman Pat, his Royal Mail van and his black and white cat. The poems we wrote in the laundromat.

We arrived in homemade jerseys, homespun and bark-dyed, we’re leaving now in summer, pale faced and dark eyed.

Tuesday Poem – Archaeology

My brother’s been living beneath the bones of Whataitai
a skeleton brought up by a fault line.
He watches rugby at The Realm.

In the morning we take the ferry to Matiu/Somes
and walk along the ridges
never once spotting tuatara.

Mokopuna Island remains in shadow
cast by its own caves.

Kakariki fly over the gun emplacement
where we sit and eat sandwiches
among the scattered remains of a seagull.

© Saradha Koirala, from Wit of the staircase (Steele Roberts, 2009)

Tuesday Poem – The Mariner’s Compass

by Simon Armitage
Living alone, I’m sailing the world
single-handed in a rented house.
Last week I rounded the Cape of Good Hope,
came through in one piece;

this morning, flying fish
lying dead in the porch with the post.
I peg out duvet covers and sheets
to save fuel when the wind blows,

tune the engine so it purrs all night
like a fridge, run upstairs
with the old-fashioned thought
of plotting a course by the stars.

Friends wave from the cliffs,
talk nervously about the coast-guard station.
Under the rules, close contact
with another soul means disqualification.

Tuesday poem – Retreating

Waitarere, July ’09

I leave the light on, turn down the fire

but get lost anyway.

I choose a large dark log as a reference point

but everything is dark.

The moon highlights the whitecaps

of my sneakers

but it’s too close and untethered

to rely on as a guide.

Drift wood, piles of seaweed or washed up corpses?

Hoof-marks, footprints,

tracks left by the retreating tide.

Tyre marks of an all-terrain.

Next time I’ll draw an arrow on the sand

that palimpsest of names

hearts, initials, pictures of boats

arrows pointing every direction home.

Explorers who crossed whole oceans

must have tuned their eyes so finely

to notice each shift and twitch of starlight,

like trying to read crushed pipi shells

Tuesday Poem: Tearwater tea

Over and over they told me the story:
a boy, an imagined wolf.

As if sorrow can be likened to mischief.

I hold the teapot in both hands
another pleasingly salty brew.

Echolalia

This morning’s northerly
throws death out in my path
a tiny carcass blown from a rubbish bag
a broken bird
at the bottom of a plate glass window.

A paper bag twists itself into the gutter
a butterfly has its wings torn off.

An old man walks into a bar
moving like shaking out a rug
he smells of wood-smoke and rain.
No
like wet logs burning.

I think of houses I’ve visited
with apple cores browning under beds

a cat licking the ends of breakfast
off a bowl in the sink
and the use of words I wasn’t allowed
words I wouldn’t dare use
and words I’d never heard before.