Parenting

I greet you
with arms I wish
were covered
with velvet,
to soften the blows
of a hundred
misfortunes.

When I help
to pick up
the pieces
I hold them gently,
privately acknowledging
the part they
play in making
you strong.

Autumn sun - Haiku

Though it is autumn
sun shines through the cabbage tree
imbuing its warmth.

May Haiku

Under dark storm clouds
The deep emerald sea churns
Passing gulls cry out

Kina

Photo I based my painting on

Marking Time

While it
has been
a gradual week
there have been moments of punctuation.
Question marks around the unknown,
times when the brief pause of a comma was required,
a period of full-stops,
and events of exclamation mark proportions.

Haiku 06

Earth sighs and drinks up
Spent leaves float atop puddles
Sorrows last seasons

Naive Simplicity

Your brother is born
while you sift the incredible
from the yeti and bigfoot
pages on the internet.
You whistle the theme tune
from the X-files, and become
transfixed with the facts
of science fiction.
Your brother is born and
you look for lost marbles,
your eight year old mind
missing the miracle by a mile.

It's a kiwi thing

While the radio talked to itself
about the day’s news
we woke up and made love.
Then in the time it took for our
shadows to do a one-eighty
you had flown away to
the island of snow,
towards the mourning sounds
of mutton birders.

Draining

To save us from drowning
in a cityside pool of sky tears
you don cardboard clothes
caked in the mud of yesterday
to dig a trench around our souls

Ether-reality

Whispers,
ethereal visitations,
your sojourn a frolic of frivolities.
Muse for a moment
on your beneficence, your abilities...
Under some daylight
tree out there you too may turn your
hand to a poem

Emotional Ephemera

It is slippery today
forcing it causes falseness
and failure
Better left to its own devices
devilish vices
devilish voices.
Minds wander to
places best left unvisited.

Yet yesterday
it was sunny side up
running...
outstretched arms
against the mirth
of the southerly wind
on a west coast beach
where the gods were
thrashing about in the water.
Eating mangoes to the
going down of the sun.

Threads

Old habits die hard.
Adjusting to change
I wait three phases of lights
before choosing my green.
Your unmet daughter
is born and starts school.
Visitors must come
in the back door
and leave by the front
so there is no opportunity
to bump into recognised sorrows.
Rommel’s cave was tidier
than I expected.
Window wipers
make small change
of the leaves
on the windscreen.
Light sees its opportunity.
Is that why all the pastry is yellow?

Do you know who you are?

We have not met in two decades
and as synchronicity would have it
we still haven’t.
I imagine what those years
and too many indulgent vices
have rendered.
You were never good at self care.
I remember your bedroom....
sad love poems
bursting out of draws
and your naked pillow
exposing its stains
from the perspiration
of sleepless nights