by Aaron Robertson
I
The koru unfurls,
loosening a careful hold
and the sequence starts anew:
bumblebees clamber on stamen,
pistil; branch split by shoot
as red leaf breaks from
green, unconscious of days
fog-filled at noon.
II
Out past the pillars,
we must name the waves
and patterns that bind them;
helmsman to surf is
gannet-led, longship
by light when maps cannot doubt
a knowing ear to wind,
prow pulled to sun.
by Piet Nieuwland
puriri moth dreaming
under a midnight moon
on ridgelines of obsidian
hangs the emerald cloth of spring
from te moananui a ranginui
floats a rainbow by moonlight
in this sacred night
clouds of kowhai in rivers of stars
the desires of our hearts
are moonbeams of puawhananga
at the dawn moon
a piwakawaka throws jewels of waiata
in the chaos of love
love is chaos dressed in kisses
* * *
This poem is posted as part of the Aotearoa Affair Blog Carnival. It was written during a short stay at Opononi on the shores of the Hokianga Harbour, a singularly romantic place. The puriri moth is a large black and green moth with characteristic patterns on its wings. The moon was rising, a full moon. The dreamtime is a spiritual connection to my ancestry, and the Hokianga has inspired that in me as a human living in Northland. The poetry I write frequently comes from the places of Northland, and has been doing so for the last thirty years, although there is usually a connection to another part of the world or another culture. Most of my poetry is love poetry but it is often disguised. I love to play with the many varieties of language and what is revealed in translation from other cultures.
by Martin Porter
Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, Carnegie Hall, November 1957
They were not in his canon. Dizzy,
Billie, Ray, he stomped the same boards,
Chet and Sonny too
Humph he did not meet
but that did not stop
him writing
Effortless his playing
Unique undoubtedly in genius fashion
as peculiar as his hat
Vast
Erratic
The angular notes
strike from the piano strings
like crimes
of Epistrophy:
angular dancesteps, complex,
astringent, roll like a spiked ball
John’s sax is calming. Laminated
sheets of space flow in long solos, probing
discovered corners of this difficult man. The joy is evident
while he plays, not one, not two, but
,fluent,
Many notes, all at once, or in rapid
Punctuation.
Do you feel you have to get up
And dance?
Do you feel you have to sit down
To seize the opportunity?
Well, you needn’t.
In Marco’s kitchen
Dali’s Christ of St John stares down
From the wooden walls.
The wood fired stove has been burning
All morning
Mixing the sounds of sparks and effervescent knots
With the torrential rain.
The damp smell mixes
With the scent of chopped garlic cloves
Not crushed,
Like some porcini mushroom dish.
As Lina plunges pasta into her
History browned, oil encrusted pot
Marco grasps a fist of octopus
To toss with wilted spinach,
Nettles and plum toms from his back yard,
And anchovy in spiteful superheated oil. This is a
Jackson Pollack of a dish,
Or, more like, Warhol’s Marilyns,
Elegant, always the same
Never identical.
Marco hides his aproned pasta paunch
Behind the shadows of the fire, and
Lina drains spaghetti, throws it on the pan
And tips it onto three plain terracotta plates.
This is lunch
In Marco’s kitchen, with Lina
And fine food.
© Martin Porter 2007
This poem, with some addional notes, can also be found at Poetry Notes and Jottings
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
It is sweet to die for ones country – that’s the old lie according to the WW1 poem by Wilfred Owen.
William Macrae was a very busy man who loved the place he lived.
Many say, including Al, it is the greatest living place on earth.
It is the greatest working place on earth.
And now for William the greatest dying place on earth.
William did die for his country.
He was not fighting on the fields of Flanders to which Wilfred Owens poem refers,
although in many ways the scene is not too much different -
fire, flame, fear, noise, explosions, terror, gases, smoke, falling embers
But he did die for what he believed in
Ranger Visitor Services Kaiarahi Taonga Manuhiri
Protecting this bloody amazing beautiful country
Piece of hot summer coastline crimson bloody red.
Piet Nieuwland
Watch How the Slip Tips
watch how the slip tips itself over and flies headlong into a dive that wings into an arrow riding on the force of the throw and the magnetism that large objects emit, following the curve of vectors and wind resistance, the shaft vibrating through hillsides of toetoe torched with lightning, the satin plumes splinting the blue horizon with fire stippled bursts and shards, trapezoidal crystals and zags.
in my mind is a wave, a surging crest of intelligence breaking upon an open sandy beach on the western coast, it rolls up into the shallows and foams into a long line of surf, tearing open the pent up energy of a large ocean crossing, pulling a net through the deepest passage of currents and tidal floors, enveloping the wisdom of fish and seabirds that plunge through masquerades of reflections, the wave it bursts and throws out incandescent showers of sparks and glowing particles in an effervescent mirage under a dome of mirrors repeating themselves thru infinity by factors of prime numbers and combinations of polygons and floating orbs that drift slowly like bubbles, and coalesce
-Piet Nieuwland
-appeared in 52|250‘s fourth and final quarterly among the best submissions for Week #49.
Note and post by Michelle Elvy
* * *
Ulysses Reconsidered
Just like Farnese’s birds, whose voices became caught
on an unchanging view of palaces in ruin,
you fell into a dream: one of rivers that ran
with sentimental ease before your family seat.
But left to choose, you changed the eternal for light,
where gifted canon’s robes allowed your mind to turn
from thoughts of chimney smoke and gardens seldom seen,
the limestone of your end betraying words of slate.
The Fleece still hangs unclaimed, yet slowly I’m pulled back
to forest-covered hills and hard volcanic rock,
unsure of how the tide has brought me to this shore.
Your counsel holds no truth for sailors who have come
to crave the open sea, when mesmorized by fame
you never knew the life you claimed to hold so dear.
-Aaron Robertson
-appeared in 52|250‘s fourth and final quarterly among the best submissions for Week #50.
Note and post by Michelle Elvy
by Martin Porter
Gently lifting with the ocean
Sweeping slowly up the shore
She is resting on the boundary
Somewhere between air and more
Substantial fluids on her body
Offer her to turquoise light
Looking down from cloud free heavens
Looking to the Sun which might
One day drift from daily motion
Sinking into nightly rest
Glowing dim in richest crimson
Falling sea-ward in the west
Where wheeling terns once congregated
Against a foaming faded moon
Suspended in the paling sunshine
Framed by marram stubbled dune
Salt spray seasoned sea-sage sweetened
Breeze blown clean of vraic and sand
Swept branches stick black fingers upward
Urging gulls to leave the land
And forge out from their earthy havens
Venture forth without a notion
Of where to go or where to settle
Gently lifting with the ocean.
© Martin Porter 2000
(Note: the Jèrriais word vraic means seaweed, and is pronounced “rack”)
by Aaron Robertson
Paul had apples in Aix,
taking one each time the mountain
called as God-created
evidence of the volumes he sought.
Here, grapefruit rest
with yellowed limes, both
ready to assist in serving
liquid absolution.
We meet beyond the bowl,
on tablecloths composed in ample
folds and the angles they force
to stretch towards the frame.
From like disorder an ordering
is found, our compulsions fulfilled
for a light change by coloured
planes that modulate and fall.
then touch the distant light as it fades into shadow, the Tutamoe clays roll over in verdant velvet smooth ridges and Maunganui the bluff lies slumbering against the aquamarillion haze, thunder rolls over Waipoua, light splitting out from rewarewa crystalline caught in sunlit flash, the river boils, surges, rushes over rapids hissing and laughing, the forest tastes the roar of water through canyons of kauri their cold trunks and asteliad gardens dripping fungi bloom in myriads of cinnabar and soft myceliae, mosses saturated burst open glowing translucent breathing new sporophytic generations, nikau pregnant gestate creamy white florets beneath green cupped sheaths, the visual extravaganza of moonlight and milkyways and cloud masses silently drifting across the canopy, its knitted surface of leaves, conical crowns and pyramidal spires, optimizing the shape of leaves and emergent rata epiphytic and moody the patchwork of life histories, deposition and falling of leaves, branches, cones, fronds, trunks and flowers, all the colours that make the shade, the seedlings, the single organism of networks that is this jungle
by Arthur Fairley
She refused
to take her words orally.
The earliest were force-fed by a
panicked mother. Hopefully
out of harm’s way. She began to dance
open-mouthed through the gland’s shadow,
a wail-harp is brought in,
little by little white notes are torn
from her throat
mucous-torn
uterus-torn
it is the breeding season of song.
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