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

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.

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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.

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Tuesday Poem: Sir Patrick Spence

The king sits in Dumferling toune,
Drinking the blude-reid wine:
"O whar will I get guid sailor,
To sail this schip of mine?"

Up and spak an eldern knicht,
Sat at the kings richt kne:
"Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor
That sails upon the se."

The king has written a braid letter,
And signd it wi his hand,
And sent it to Sir Patrick Spence,
Was walking on the sand.

The first line that Sir Patrick red,
A loud lauch lauched he ;
The next line that Sir Patrick red,
The teir blinded his ee.

"O wha is this has don this deid,
This ill deid don to me.
To send me out this time o' the yeir.
To sail upon the se!

"Mak hast, mak haste, my mirry men all,
Our guid schip sails the morne:"
"O say na sae, my master deir,
For I feir a deadlie storme.

"Late late yestreen I saw the new moone,
Wi the auld moone in hir arme,
And I feir, I feir, my deir master,
That we will cum to harme."

O our Scots nobles wer riclit laith
To weet their cork-heild schoone ;
Bot lang owre a' the play wer playd,
Thair hats they swam aboone.'

O lang, lang may their ladies sit,
Wi thair fans into their hand.
Or eir they se Sir Patrick Spence
Cum sailing to the land.

O lang, lang may the ladies stand,
Wi thair gold kems in their hair.
Waiting for thair ain deir lords,
For they'll se thame na mair.

Haf owre, haf owre to Aberdour,
It's fiftie fadom deip.
And thair lies guid Sir Patrick Spence,
Wi the Scots lords at his feit.

anonymous


I was thinking the other day about some of the old narrative poems and ballads which I learnt about in "English I". This is one of them. I was lucky enough to hear it read aloud (fittingly enough) in the great stone hall in the old Canterbury University campus in Christchurch. Our poetry lecturer was a dramatist and actor and his rendition of this poem (and other ballads) held the large class of students spell-bound.

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Tuesday Poem: Evensong in a graveyard of villas

The pines on the ridge are about to cede

their colour to the night.  Once more

light’s absence will shroud this place.

Not even car-lights on the highway below

(such is their need for road when it’s dark)

re-mark the trees – their placement

their particular explanation of green.

Soon the evening will lay claim too

to vestiges of villas which once stood

in the bush beneath the pines –

orphaned lawns, homeless paths

rhododendron that flower

among five-finger, tree fern, rata.

These last artefacts mark the bones

of grand abodes. These and a plaque

at the site of each home

listing its name, its history of dwellers

its date of sacrifice to the road.


This poem, which appears in Tongues of Ash, came to me one day as I was staring out of my office, looking for inspiration. My view is over a State Highway onto a hillside, part of a reserve of native bush called Percy's Reserve and I remembered on one of my rambles there seeing the preserved sites of what once were houses.

The tone of the poem was a far from perfect attempt to capture what Bryan Walpert, one of Tuesday Poem's alumni once spectacularly achieved, in a poem called Aubade, which won the NZPS 2007 poetry competition. Evensong in a graveyard of villas was not based on Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, as one reviewer of Tongues of Ash once asserted.

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Tuesday Poem: planchette by James Norcliffe

I'm the hub Tuesday Poem editor this week, and the poem I've chosen is "planchette" by James Norcliffe. Check it out at the main Tuesday Poem blog, and don't forget to check out the poems in the sidebar as well!

A drizzle of ghazals

'Water' was the theme of the latest Challenge issued by the online Ghazal Page journal. The ghazals for the Water Challenge were selected by guest editor and Kapiti Coast-based, New Zealand poet Mary Cresswell. Among the 12 ghazals by American, Canadian, and New Zealand writers are two I wrote which were originally published in Tongues of Ash – Winds and Time and All in a Day's Work.

Tuesday Poem: Variations on an early turning

Five days of rain, bitter gales
mass desertion of leaves
bedraggled blackbird, savage at
the last apple’s heart
pecking a cadenza for rain’s bolero.

Days of unseasonal cold too
snow on the hills, an early turning
as my own winter starts
with skirls of slurry and sleet
from the pipes that plumb to my heart.

In a boy’s body, after hard running
I remember lying listening
to ground-bouncing, pounding timpani
unaware the heart’s sound
will one day desert the body.

And you my love
try to mask your concern
but your heart rides tandem with mine
and taps a discordant descant
for my drug-induced adagio.

Today, for a heartbeat of time
the day mutes rain’s tattoo
unravels a sodden skein
from the sullen blanket of sky
lets through a quaver of white.

Not enough blue sky to make
a sailor a pair of pants
your father would say
before his proud heart surrendered
to time’s savage pecking.

Though long enough to display
the latency all days have
for light, warmth, death’s abstention
for playing arpeggios of hope
in a heart’s winter garden.

The recent change of season here in NZ - snow, rain, gales - reminded me of an early winter a few years ago. It coincided with a personal health scare. I wrote this poem at that time and it was published in Tongues of Ash.

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