Horizontal violence

A poem essay about wind (the weather variety)

 

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Weather fascinates me. Where I have lived for the last forty years - Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand - has weather, particularly wind, which it is reknowned for. Like Chicago, it is called the “Windy City” and, as the sign near Wellington's airport suggests, it can put airplane landing experiences on a par with bungy-jumping. On very windy days, Wellingtonians with nothing better to do will pack their kids into the car and drive to the airport for free plane-landing entertainment. Just the other day, a Wellington digital artist opened an exhibition entitled Rivers of Wind. It is an artistic simulation based on eight years of weather data gathered from the weather station at Wellington airport.

Image: Canva

On Wellington’s wind-tunnel streets, people have been blown over and broken bones trying to cross the road. Holding onto lamp posts has become a  survival tactic for even sober Wellingtonians. The city’s outdoor ball sports, such as football and rugby, sometimes end up being contested across the width of the field rather than up and down its length. Visiting cricket teams have exhausted themselves (and lost the match) fielding and bowling into the wind. In the following poem, I've tried to capture what it's like living here.

 

The Northwest Wind Gang is back

 

Past masters of horizontal violence

skulk about town, by Featherston, on Stout,

down Customhouse Quay. Bully boy racer

blowhards, they belt you in the back, throw sand

in your eyes, then hoon around night and day

all taunt, jostle, swashbuckling hiss and spit,

drag racing in great gusts, trashing the streets.

Near Brooklyn Heights and Tinakori Hill 

it’s hit and run for fun, breaking the limbs

of young trees and old ladies before

shrieking off to push and shove the ferries

and flatten the harbour. Oh, for a big

High to arrest the lot, pack them off for

a spell in Mākara’s Wind Farm Prison.

 

The poem describes the effects of the city's prevailing northwesterlies, but Wellington’s wind doesn’t blow all the time. In fact, there is a national saying, delivered with admiration rather than derision, that states 'Nothing beats Wellington on a good day'. New Zealand's geography has a lot to do with Wellington's wind diet. It is a skinny country comprising two main islands aligned more or less north-south. Both islands have mountain range spines and these affect the direction and speed of winds. The stretch of water between the two islands - Cook Strait- acts as a funnel for nor'west winds, which makes boat trips as fraught as flying into Wellington on days which are not good.

 

The capital isn't selfish though - it also gets beaten up by southerly gales. The end of the North Island is exposed to the south and storms originating in the Antarctic bring snow and ice to places in which they no right to be. I once lived in a hill suburb to the north of Wellington city. Our house had a view directly south to the mouth of Wellington harbour and I could often see southerly storms on their way for a rather robust hail-fellow-well-met embrace.

 

Wellington Southerly

Those whose windows quiz Cook Strait spy it first

a horizon smudge, a pencil line that

becomes a wall for all to fear and curse.

The sun, before so charming, smells a rat

grabs a jacket, gloves, hat, turns off the lights.

On the Valley’s river gravel runways,

gulls face south in staunch platoons, feathers spiked

shoulders hunched, ready for the stoush and fray.

White-top relays are first to open fire –

harbingers of rain and ice, they charge the

harbour’s mouth, smash at teeth and gums, expire.

Then in Seatoun, Kelburn, and Khandallah

on earth and house, railway line and road

the weather bomb ignites its fuse, explodes.

 

 

New Zealand is also subject to cyclones (hurricanes) that originate in the tropics and make their way south. Many slide their way down either side of the country and we miss their full effects. Others lose steam by the time they get to us. Some, however, give us much more than a tickle up. Last year (2023), many parts of the North Island were badly affected by Cyclone Gabrielle. In 1968, a huge cyclone arrived over Wellington at the same time that an inter-island ferry (the Wāhine) was trying to enter Wellington Harbour. The ferry sank with the loss of 51 lives. Some survivors made it to safety at Eastbourne on the far side of the harbour. I was living in Christchurch in the South Island at the time and Marg, my wife-to-be whom I hadn't yet met, was in Wellington. We talked about our respective experiences with good friend Doug, a Wāhine survivor.

 

What we were doing on Wāhine Day

 

Huge trees fell down in Christchurch.

I listened all day to the air waves

for news of the seas in Wellington.

Marg sat on a train at Ngauranga,

waves breaking over the carriage.

Marg and I cried when Doug said

he jumped ship almost too late.

 

At the Eastbourne pub

Doug lined up a beer and whiskey –

and was asked to pay. We went round

the bays one day and found where

his lifeboat beached (the pub had gone).

Thirty years on he sailed again –

this time by fast-ferry.

 

 

I have also lived (twice) in another North Island place which gets its fair share of zephyrs on steroids - Linton Camp on the Manawatū plains, in the Island's southwest. It is subject to the same Nor'westers that infest Wellington but with the plains being flat, the wind is able to pick up speed before it has to scale the mountain ranges in the middle of the island. There is a low point in the ranges through which the wind is funneled, so it concentrates without having to slow down. It wasn't a great distance from where we lived and some, who have pitched tent in both Linton and Wellington, rate the former's winds as the more tent-wrecking bovver-boyish.
 

The sea trees of Linton Camp

 

Tall pines, gracelessly aged

lived across the road.

 

Their long limbs spun wind into sea –

at night, waves salved us to sleep.

 

Garages squatted under the trees.

When Linton’s winds scythed strong

 

people ran to retrieve cars

fearing falling trees.

 

Cones pot-shotted our roof

but no pines fell. We re-berthed

 

in Trieste Street a few years on.

Stepping-stone stumps stood

 

where the trees once grew.

The garages had been felled too.

 

But when the gales blew in Manawatū

white-tops still surfed that street.

 

 

 All this wind experience led me to thinking about how life and lives can be impacted by real and metaphorical wind over time. This ghazal-form poem is a reflection on that.

 

Winds and time

 

Through our lives blow many winds and gales.

Tomorrow’s forecast is for dangerous gales.

 

Loved ones and their dreams are drowned at sea

when storms cause ships on shoals to sail.

 

At night, the moon is lashed by trees

while men go mad from days of nor’west gales.

 

Wind on sand makes seas of crescent moons

and sand on winds of time all life assails.

 

Take my hand, Margret my love, we’ll climb the tops

lean forward, yell, push back tomorrow’s gales.

 

 

Versions of these poems were published  in Tongues of Ash, Keith Westwater (Interactive Press, 2011) and other publications.