NaPoWriMo5: Broken Thread

It has been a beautiful autumn day here in Wellington. Nic, Leonie and I took our bikes out for a very short, but extremely pleasant cruise around the Miramar Peninsula. I followed that up with a walk around the Southern Coast to Red Rocks and back. There was a party going on at one of the baches, and men in four wheel drives loaded up with beer were powering along the gravel road. Three young boys on mountain bikes raced down gravel hillsides, falling off, dusting themselves off, and getting back up again. In a quiet little outcropping of rocks I loaded my arms full of paua shells to keep in the bathroom.

I needed some quiet time to play with the theme of broken threads in my mind. There were so many directions to take this prompt, and it was difficult to decide where to go. It took a little solitude to find my way. There's a real art to finding somewhere to sit on the coast. Do I choose the rock where the water grows still and dark in its depth, or do I sit somewhere where the tide surges in, washing great growths of kelp that may hide seals in their midst?

As I walked today's poem slowly wrote itself. I stirred it around while watching the Bluebridge, an Interislander and a freight ship passing by. I stopped at the place where psytrance parties are held each summer, and where last year a body washed up with its hands removed.

The Southern Coast was a bustling place today, full of vehicles, cyclists, runners, divers and walkers. However I was still able to find a fullness of peace on the edge of the surging tides, and I returned home renewed.

Broken Thread
The spider's web
outside the kitchen
window caught the
worst of last night's
Southerly Storm.
Drops of rain still
cling to torn strands
as frantic rescue
operations are
initiated.

You are still in bed,
your back turned to
me this morning in
symbollic admonition.
The broken threads
of our own web
still hanging limply
in the palour of
dawn.

And as always
I will act the spider,
effect repairs,
spin what is now
unwoven.