“Have you news of my boy Jack?”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind —
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.
Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!
This month has seen not only the 99th anniversary of ANZAC day, but also 100 years since the outbreak of WW1. Given these events, I have chosen a poem by Rudyard Kipling for this post. Kipling lost his own son John (Jack) in September 1915 at the Battle of Loos and while the poem is emotionally driven by that loss, it is also about the generic loss of loved ones in battle. Kipling wrote the poem as a prelude to a story about the Battle of Jutland in 1916, so the "Jack" can also be a reference to sailors (Jack Tars). I like the repetitive questions and use of the words 'tide' and 'wind blowing' in the poem, they echo the ebb and flow of the sea - and life.
For more good poems this week, visit
Tuesday Poem.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Tuesday Poem: The Condensed Modified Mercalli Scale
I - V
Delicately suspended objects may swing
Many people do not recognise it
Vibration like passing of truck
At night some awakened
Walls make cracking sound
Disturbance of trees, poles, and other tall objects
Pendulum clocks may stop
VI - IX
Many frightened and run outdoors
Some chimneys broken
Noticed by persons driving motorcars
Fall of columns, monuments, walls
Heavy furniture overturned
Changes in well water
Ground cracked conspicuously
X - XII
Shifts sand and mud
Water slopped over banks
Broad fissures in ground
Earth slumps
Rails bent greatly
Waves seen on ground
Lines of sight distorted
Found in the 'Modified Mercalli (MM) Intensity Scale', from An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock, originally published in 1966.
In a recent post, I quoted the middle stanza of The Condensed Modified Mercalli Scale, a found poem I wrote as part of a small collection of quake poetry with a working title of Felt Intensity. Today, the Central Hawkes Bay towns of Waipukurau and Waipawa experienced a swarm of earthquakes, the biggest of which was 5.2 on the Richter Scale. Little damage has been reported to date. The quakes have prompted me to post the complete Condensed Modified Mercalli Scale.
Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week and read TP's special 4th birthday poem, each line written by a different Tuesday Poem Poet without knowing what the other poets had written. The whole poem was knitted together by three editors and the result is fantastic.
Delicately suspended objects may swing
Many people do not recognise it
Vibration like passing of truck
At night some awakened
Walls make cracking sound
Disturbance of trees, poles, and other tall objects
Pendulum clocks may stop
VI - IX
Many frightened and run outdoors
Some chimneys broken
Noticed by persons driving motorcars
Fall of columns, monuments, walls
Heavy furniture overturned
Changes in well water
Ground cracked conspicuously
X - XII
Shifts sand and mud
Water slopped over banks
Broad fissures in ground
Earth slumps
Rails bent greatly
Waves seen on ground
Lines of sight distorted
Found in the 'Modified Mercalli (MM) Intensity Scale', from An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock, originally published in 1966.
In a recent post, I quoted the middle stanza of The Condensed Modified Mercalli Scale, a found poem I wrote as part of a small collection of quake poetry with a working title of Felt Intensity. Today, the Central Hawkes Bay towns of Waipukurau and Waipawa experienced a swarm of earthquakes, the biggest of which was 5.2 on the Richter Scale. Little damage has been reported to date. The quakes have prompted me to post the complete Condensed Modified Mercalli Scale.
Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week and read TP's special 4th birthday poem, each line written by a different Tuesday Poem Poet without knowing what the other poets had written. The whole poem was knitted together by three editors and the result is fantastic.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Writing Process Blog Tour - Sandi Sartorelli
1. What am I working on at the moment?
It’s a collection of poetry about what is dear and personal to each of us, about what we hold just beneath the surface. It could be an urge to feel the kiss of sunlight against your skin. Or, to be recognised and heard, to know the intimacy of touching another. It might be a craving to win the lotto, or have a baby. It could be a wish for a dead one to return. My collection, Calling down the sky aims to unleash many voices of desire. It culminates with the voice of Papatūānuku and her longing for Ranginui.
This project has been on and off my drawing board for some time now. After sending the collection to a publisher recently, I received a dream rejection letter (yes, there really is such a thing). She provided detailed feedback on some of the poems, practical advice about length, and genuine encouragement to continue with the project. Now I’m filled with desire and new insight to make this work grunt out loud – gracefully of course.
2. How does my work differ from others?
My poetry is nearly always portraits of people, famous people and other real folk, fictional characters, and the odd self-portrait. Sometimes I write persona poetry which lets me speak in the voice of another person.
My work often includes snatches of dialogue to emphasise the sound of a voice, and to encourage readers to think about the sound of the character’s voice as they read the poem.
I like to ground my poetry with unpoetic but concrete details like the Edmonds Cook Book, the toilet, Weet-bix, or refrigerators.
3. Why am I writing about this?
Some of us try to pretend we don’t have desires, but when you get down to it, our days would be depressing without the whetstones that can make us behave badly, bravely, unwisely. Imagine how predictable the people around us would be if they had no desires. Desire is the architect of our best and worst moments. Seems like a perfect excuse for poetry.
4. How does the writing process work?
Sometimes I’ll start with some research, but even before that there will be a stub of an idea that starts the poem. It could be a snatch of conversation, something I have felt, seen or observed, a thought, or a sound. Anything really. I start with this stub and continue to write until the results surprise me. After that I polish, spit and polish.
You can read more of my poetry here: https://sites.google.com/site/abrasartorelli/home
Next week (Monday 31 March), the Writing Process Blog Tour moves on to Mary Macpherson www.marymacphoto.wordpress.com Mary Macpherson is a poet, a photographer and a communications professional. Her photographic work has been widely exhibited, and her poetry has been published in a book-length collection, in literary journals, and as part of the collaborative work Millionaire's Shortbread (2003). In a review of Macpherson's first collection of poetry, The Inland Eye (1998), Paola Bilbrough writes that her poems 'say a lot - beautifully and with seemingly little effort - and many of the poems have a disturbing enigmatic quality'.
It’s a collection of poetry about what is dear and personal to each of us, about what we hold just beneath the surface. It could be an urge to feel the kiss of sunlight against your skin. Or, to be recognised and heard, to know the intimacy of touching another. It might be a craving to win the lotto, or have a baby. It could be a wish for a dead one to return. My collection, Calling down the sky aims to unleash many voices of desire. It culminates with the voice of Papatūānuku and her longing for Ranginui.
This project has been on and off my drawing board for some time now. After sending the collection to a publisher recently, I received a dream rejection letter (yes, there really is such a thing). She provided detailed feedback on some of the poems, practical advice about length, and genuine encouragement to continue with the project. Now I’m filled with desire and new insight to make this work grunt out loud – gracefully of course.
2. How does my work differ from others?
My poetry is nearly always portraits of people, famous people and other real folk, fictional characters, and the odd self-portrait. Sometimes I write persona poetry which lets me speak in the voice of another person.
My work often includes snatches of dialogue to emphasise the sound of a voice, and to encourage readers to think about the sound of the character’s voice as they read the poem.
I like to ground my poetry with unpoetic but concrete details like the Edmonds Cook Book, the toilet, Weet-bix, or refrigerators.
3. Why am I writing about this?
Some of us try to pretend we don’t have desires, but when you get down to it, our days would be depressing without the whetstones that can make us behave badly, bravely, unwisely. Imagine how predictable the people around us would be if they had no desires. Desire is the architect of our best and worst moments. Seems like a perfect excuse for poetry.
4. How does the writing process work?
Sometimes I’ll start with some research, but even before that there will be a stub of an idea that starts the poem. It could be a snatch of conversation, something I have felt, seen or observed, a thought, or a sound. Anything really. I start with this stub and continue to write until the results surprise me. After that I polish, spit and polish.
This photo, ‘Sense’ by Tony Stano, provided the stub for a poem about a psychiatrist who wears only black, and her repressed desire for colour.
You can read more of my poetry here: https://sites.google.com/site/abrasartorelli/home
Next week (Monday 31 March), the Writing Process Blog Tour moves on to Mary Macpherson www.marymacphoto.wordpress.com Mary Macpherson is a poet, a photographer and a communications professional. Her photographic work has been widely exhibited, and her poetry has been published in a book-length collection, in literary journals, and as part of the collaborative work Millionaire's Shortbread (2003). In a review of Macpherson's first collection of poetry, The Inland Eye (1998), Paola Bilbrough writes that her poems 'say a lot - beautifully and with seemingly little effort - and many of the poems have a disturbing enigmatic quality'.
Monday, March 17, 2014
Writing Process Blog Tour - Felt Intensity
1) What am I working on?
As Kathy Ferber mentioned in her fascinating Writing Process Blog Tour post, I currently work for New Zealand’s Earthquake Commission. I have been employed there full-time since 6 September 2010, 2 days after the first of the really big Christchurch quakes struck.
It will be no surprise then, to learn that I have just completed a small collection of poems which focuses on the effects of Canterbury's seismic events of the last 3.5 years. Although I live in Wellington, not Christchurch, I travelled there frequently during 2010 - 2013 and so experienced enough of the tens of thousands of aftershocks (including the big and deadly Feb 22nd, 2011 quake) to gain some small understanding of what it has been like for Canterbury residents.
BeckerFraserPhotos
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
During and since the Canterbury earthquakes a sub-genre of "quake" poetry emerged and a number of collections (for example, Things Lay in Pieces by Richard Langston) and many individual poems have been written. One of my favourite poems is Fault by Joannna Preston.
Quake poems are not new (which is not surprising, considering New Zealand has been known as the “Shaky Isles” since the 1800s). Before the Canterbury quakes, Sam Hunt wrote about one he experienced in South Taranaki. He called it Naming the Gods and he reads it as part of the song Cape Turnagain by the Warratahs. I use Sam’s poem as a start point for a sequence of poems in my collection – The Ruamoko Series (Ruamoko is the Maori god of earthquakes and volcanoes).
My as-yet unpublished collection probably differs a little from others in the quake genre because of the number of found poems (poems found in original text) it contains. The poem Headlines is a list of headlines from the Sunday Star Times of 5 September 2010, which was the day after the first big quake; February 22nd, 2011, Report 1 is a slightly abbreviated version of information about that quake published by GNS (New Zealand’s Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences) immediately after it happened; The Condensed Modified Mercalli Scale is a ‘Reader’s Digest’ version of this 12-point Scale, which is used by people to report how they experience an earthquake. The following is a stanza from that poem (the language is a bit ‘last century’ because the Scale was written in the early 1900s and the words and phrases are ‘as found’ in the Scale; I like the effect of the clipped, fore-shortened descriptors though - they jar just like an earthquake):
The Condensed Modified Mercalli Scale – VI - IX
Many frightened and run outdoors
Some chimneys broken
Noticed by persons driving motorcars
Fall of columns, monuments, walls
Heavy furniture overturned
Changes in well water
Ground cracked conspicuously
3) Why do I write what I do?
Tongues of Ash (see also the side bar) was my first full length collection. It contains poems which are mainly to do with place, reflections on place, memories of living in New Zealand in different localities, landscape, and the physical environment.
Felt Intensity is the working title of the small collection of quake poems which make up my reflections on the Christchurch earthquakes. It is also a term used to describe what the Modified Mercalli Scale actually measures. The titles of poems in this collection are (some of which have appeared in publications as shown below or in earlier posts on this blog):
The Condensed Modified Mercalli Scale
One might expect
Headlines
Canterbury Groundworks Group
February 22nd, 2011, Report 1
February 22nd, 2011, Report 2 (JAAM 31)
Disaster Watch
Canterbury INTREP
Kia kaha Canterbury, October 2011
The Ruamoko Series
1. Name-calling
2. Grounds for a Protection Order
3. Dear Ruamoko (JAAM 31)
4. Canterbury Oblations
5. Ruamoko, Trainwrecker
Richter meets Mercalli in Christchurch during the shallow aftershock years
Resilience (Tuesday Poem)
Accident at sea
In effect I write what I do because, like most if not all poets, I write what I feel.
4) How does your writing process work?
In answer to the first question of this post, I said that I don’t live in Christchurch. But I did once live there – as a student, for four years. When I left the city in 1970, I didn’t return for 12 years. The poem I wrote about that visit didn’t get written for another 20 years and is the opening poem of Tongues of Ash (see Canterbury Visit, Winter 1982 below).
This is evidence that in my writing process it can take a long time for a poem to ferment.
I am getting quicker though – the first of the Felt Intensity poems came along after brewing for only one year.
Canterbury Visit, Winter 1982
You clasp a shabby quilt
of dun and brown.
Memories from years before
at first stay locked away
like the snow water
in your mountains
marching north and south.
No storms call to your Port Hills
which are as bare as the trees
that trellis your sky.
But then, they always did.
Even as I enter the city
of my first true love
you get coy
clutch up a skirt of fog.
Once again
I have to fumble my way.
If you would like to follow the blogging tour, return to this blog next week (Mon 24 March), where I will be hosting Sandi Sartorelli’s Writing Process Blog Tour post.
Sandi Sartorelli recently shifted to live in the Cook Islands and is a graduate of New Zealand’s Whitireia Creative Writing Programme. Her poetry has appeared in a number of publications including JAAM, Blackmail Press, Penduline Press, Renee's Wednesday Blog and Shenandoah. Recently, two of her poems were highly commended in the Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize and the New Zealand Poetry Society Competition.
Enjoy the trip.
As Kathy Ferber mentioned in her fascinating Writing Process Blog Tour post, I currently work for New Zealand’s Earthquake Commission. I have been employed there full-time since 6 September 2010, 2 days after the first of the really big Christchurch quakes struck.
It will be no surprise then, to learn that I have just completed a small collection of poems which focuses on the effects of Canterbury's seismic events of the last 3.5 years. Although I live in Wellington, not Christchurch, I travelled there frequently during 2010 - 2013 and so experienced enough of the tens of thousands of aftershocks (including the big and deadly Feb 22nd, 2011 quake) to gain some small understanding of what it has been like for Canterbury residents.
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
During and since the Canterbury earthquakes a sub-genre of "quake" poetry emerged and a number of collections (for example, Things Lay in Pieces by Richard Langston) and many individual poems have been written. One of my favourite poems is Fault by Joannna Preston.
Quake poems are not new (which is not surprising, considering New Zealand has been known as the “Shaky Isles” since the 1800s). Before the Canterbury quakes, Sam Hunt wrote about one he experienced in South Taranaki. He called it Naming the Gods and he reads it as part of the song Cape Turnagain by the Warratahs. I use Sam’s poem as a start point for a sequence of poems in my collection – The Ruamoko Series (Ruamoko is the Maori god of earthquakes and volcanoes).
My as-yet unpublished collection probably differs a little from others in the quake genre because of the number of found poems (poems found in original text) it contains. The poem Headlines is a list of headlines from the Sunday Star Times of 5 September 2010, which was the day after the first big quake; February 22nd, 2011, Report 1 is a slightly abbreviated version of information about that quake published by GNS (New Zealand’s Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences) immediately after it happened; The Condensed Modified Mercalli Scale is a ‘Reader’s Digest’ version of this 12-point Scale, which is used by people to report how they experience an earthquake. The following is a stanza from that poem (the language is a bit ‘last century’ because the Scale was written in the early 1900s and the words and phrases are ‘as found’ in the Scale; I like the effect of the clipped, fore-shortened descriptors though - they jar just like an earthquake):
The Condensed Modified Mercalli Scale – VI - IX
Many frightened and run outdoors
Some chimneys broken
Noticed by persons driving motorcars
Fall of columns, monuments, walls
Heavy furniture overturned
Changes in well water
Ground cracked conspicuously
3) Why do I write what I do?
Tongues of Ash (see also the side bar) was my first full length collection. It contains poems which are mainly to do with place, reflections on place, memories of living in New Zealand in different localities, landscape, and the physical environment.
Felt Intensity is the working title of the small collection of quake poems which make up my reflections on the Christchurch earthquakes. It is also a term used to describe what the Modified Mercalli Scale actually measures. The titles of poems in this collection are (some of which have appeared in publications as shown below or in earlier posts on this blog):
The Condensed Modified Mercalli Scale
One might expect
Headlines
Canterbury Groundworks Group
February 22nd, 2011, Report 1
February 22nd, 2011, Report 2 (JAAM 31)
Disaster Watch
Canterbury INTREP
Kia kaha Canterbury, October 2011
The Ruamoko Series
1. Name-calling
2. Grounds for a Protection Order
3. Dear Ruamoko (JAAM 31)
4. Canterbury Oblations
5. Ruamoko, Trainwrecker
Richter meets Mercalli in Christchurch during the shallow aftershock years
Resilience (Tuesday Poem)
Accident at sea
In effect I write what I do because, like most if not all poets, I write what I feel.
4) How does your writing process work?
In answer to the first question of this post, I said that I don’t live in Christchurch. But I did once live there – as a student, for four years. When I left the city in 1970, I didn’t return for 12 years. The poem I wrote about that visit didn’t get written for another 20 years and is the opening poem of Tongues of Ash (see Canterbury Visit, Winter 1982 below).
This is evidence that in my writing process it can take a long time for a poem to ferment.
I am getting quicker though – the first of the Felt Intensity poems came along after brewing for only one year.
Canterbury Visit, Winter 1982
You clasp a shabby quilt
of dun and brown.
Memories from years before
at first stay locked away
like the snow water
in your mountains
marching north and south.
No storms call to your Port Hills
which are as bare as the trees
that trellis your sky.
But then, they always did.
Even as I enter the city
of my first true love
you get coy
clutch up a skirt of fog.
Once again
I have to fumble my way.
If you would like to follow the blogging tour, return to this blog next week (Mon 24 March), where I will be hosting Sandi Sartorelli’s Writing Process Blog Tour post.
Sandi Sartorelli recently shifted to live in the Cook Islands and is a graduate of New Zealand’s Whitireia Creative Writing Programme. Her poetry has appeared in a number of publications including JAAM, Blackmail Press, Penduline Press, Renee's Wednesday Blog and Shenandoah. Recently, two of her poems were highly commended in the Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize and the New Zealand Poetry Society Competition.
Enjoy the trip.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Tuesday Poem: Cloth Cap commutes
Yesterday, the Humourless Seinfeld spammed his audience with
an endless tweet, an unlikeable Facebook post, an audible Feltron Report.
Despite his best efforts, Cloth Cap couldn't shut out the confounding sound
so the Chopin-playing pianist hung his head, stopped playing.
Today the Humourless Seinfeld and his listening post sit two rows back.
Cloth Cap can still hear him inside his string phones, can hear him
sliming the 1812 overture, lowering the lifting of Napoleon's siege
of Moscow, spiking the guns, muffling the bells.
Tomorrow, Cloth Cap will magnanimously provide HS and his companion
with their own bus, TV producer, camera crew, and direct feeds to all
the world's reality shows. Cloth Cap will refuse resulting YouTube clip
advertising royalties and smile while he listens to Vivaldi.
Three and a half years of bus commuting have provided a lot of material for Cloth Cap. I don't think it will be his last reflection.
Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week.
an endless tweet, an unlikeable Facebook post, an audible Feltron Report.
Despite his best efforts, Cloth Cap couldn't shut out the confounding sound
so the Chopin-playing pianist hung his head, stopped playing.
Today the Humourless Seinfeld and his listening post sit two rows back.
Cloth Cap can still hear him inside his string phones, can hear him
sliming the 1812 overture, lowering the lifting of Napoleon's siege
of Moscow, spiking the guns, muffling the bells.
Tomorrow, Cloth Cap will magnanimously provide HS and his companion
with their own bus, TV producer, camera crew, and direct feeds to all
the world's reality shows. Cloth Cap will refuse resulting YouTube clip
advertising royalties and smile while he listens to Vivaldi.
Three and a half years of bus commuting have provided a lot of material for Cloth Cap. I don't think it will be his last reflection.
Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Tuesday Poem: The Rock – a tribute to Tiny Hill
The reasons
we called you this
at first were visual -
schist tor torso
voice of trampled gravel
nose as flat
as a skipping stone
(ground down in the murk
of countless scrums and rucks)
In 1964, when I jumped off
the train at 2 a.m. to land
in Waiouru's railway metal
and by moonlight saw
for the first time
two presentations of immensity -
Ruapehu to my left and you
on the platform to my right -
I didn’t know that
you were a famous All Black
from the 'fifty-six test series
the first the ABs ever won
against the 'boks
Nor did I really care
about that then
for like our fathers after the war
you never talked
to us Army boys
about your exploits
(though I've heard
at times you would confide
with close mates
over a post-match beer
how vindicated you felt
that you were dropped
for the one test we lost
against those 'boks)
Only now do I recall
the faintest of wry grins
when we did odd things
to avoid you - hiding
taking round-about routes
(or when you suddenly appeared
just as we went out of bounds)
lying flat in the roadside grit
hoping the dust
would swallow us
The reasons we still
call you this
are now more visceral
knowing that fifty years ago
we boys were small stones
carried by life’s river
to the anchor of a large rock
where we were taught
to carry the ball
read the game
give it our all
we called you this
at first were visual -
schist tor torso
voice of trampled gravel
nose as flat
as a skipping stone
(ground down in the murk
of countless scrums and rucks)
In 1964, when I jumped off
the train at 2 a.m. to land
in Waiouru's railway metal
and by moonlight saw
for the first time
two presentations of immensity -
Ruapehu to my left and you
on the platform to my right -
I didn’t know that
you were a famous All Black
from the 'fifty-six test series
the first the ABs ever won
against the 'boks
Nor did I really care
about that then
for like our fathers after the war
you never talked
to us Army boys
about your exploits
(though I've heard
at times you would confide
with close mates
over a post-match beer
how vindicated you felt
that you were dropped
for the one test we lost
against those 'boks)
Only now do I recall
the faintest of wry grins
when we did odd things
to avoid you - hiding
taking round-about routes
(or when you suddenly appeared
just as we went out of bounds)
lying flat in the roadside grit
hoping the dust
would swallow us
The reasons we still
call you this
are now more visceral
knowing that fifty years ago
we boys were small stones
carried by life’s river
to the anchor of a large rock
where we were taught
to carry the ball
read the game
give it our all
A couple
of weekends ago, I went to a reunion which marked the fiftieth anniversary of
joining the New Zealand Army for a group of boy soldier entrants, of which I
was one. Fifty-four of our original intake of just over 140 attended. Also
attending was Tiny Hill, now 87, who was our "School Sergeant
Major". I read this poem
during the Saturday evening's dinner celebrations.
Visit
Tuesday Poem for more poems this week.
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Tuesday Poem: Ruamoko, trainwrecker
If you study a map of the South Island’s fault lines
you will notice that they resemble a railway
marshalling yard. The main trunk line is the big bugger,
the trans-alpine fault, running up the spine of the island.
Somewhere near Murchison, it breaks north-east and forms
a series of branch and shunting lines which meet the sea
at Marlborough before chunneling under Cook Strait.
But if you zoom into that junction at Murchison and search
until you find the Train Controller’s box – one of those
buildings on four legs from which the points are operated –
focus in again and look closely through the windows.
There you will see a Train Controller, bound and gagged,
with a look of horror on his face. Ruamoko, eyes shut
and grinning, is playing with the point-setting levers.
I wrote this poem recently and it is the last in my Ruamoko series - a small collection of 14-line poems that reference the god of earthquakes (and volcanoes - sorry Aucklanders). I've posted it because I haven't posted in a while, mainly because my blog took some unplanned time out over the last month and a half. Thanks to help from fellow Tuesday Poem poets Tim Jones and Helen McKinlay, I have managed to resuscitate it.
Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week.
you will notice that they resemble a railway
marshalling yard. The main trunk line is the big bugger,
the trans-alpine fault, running up the spine of the island.
Somewhere near Murchison, it breaks north-east and forms
a series of branch and shunting lines which meet the sea
at Marlborough before chunneling under Cook Strait.
But if you zoom into that junction at Murchison and search
until you find the Train Controller’s box – one of those
buildings on four legs from which the points are operated –
focus in again and look closely through the windows.
There you will see a Train Controller, bound and gagged,
with a look of horror on his face. Ruamoko, eyes shut
and grinning, is playing with the point-setting levers.
I wrote this poem recently and it is the last in my Ruamoko series - a small collection of 14-line poems that reference the god of earthquakes (and volcanoes - sorry Aucklanders). I've posted it because I haven't posted in a while, mainly because my blog took some unplanned time out over the last month and a half. Thanks to help from fellow Tuesday Poem poets Tim Jones and Helen McKinlay, I have managed to resuscitate it.
Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week.
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