Writer's Island: Rising

What a juicy prompt! I was thrilled when I saw the task set for us this week. Anyone with enough patience to scroll through my last few posts will get an indication of the kind of journey I'm on at the moment. Over the last couple of months I have gained a whole new respect for this person who is me. I wanted to reflect that sense of riding a crest of self-recognition, but also to transpose that into a wider context, that of a population of beings 'rising' to a new level of consciousness.

Rising

There’s a full moon rising

swollen, pulling the earth

towards her. We are all

lifted, we elevate -

desires illuminated

in lunar light.

In rising she reduces,

yet her light casts further.

Behind all she touches

shadows expand the

volume of our dreams.

Wrapped in a crystalline

filigree we are

precious too.

Writer's Island: Over the Horizon

The Writer's Island prompt for this week is 'over the horizon'.  It was intended that we consider what our future might hold, however I took this prompt in a different direction.  This is a poem that has been sitting in my subconscious for a few years, ever since I moved to this city of steep hills and gullies.  At first I felt that the lack of expansive lines of sight also translated to a narrowness of thinking, however I later learned that was not the case at all.  Sorry, it's another Wellington poem!

Beyond Horizons

You can not rely
on horizons here.

Sure, the sun rises
over the mountains
to the East, light
appearing first
in prelude, but
Westwards she disappears
behind the ridge late
afternoon in summer,
earlier in June.

We can not take cues
from a line where
water meets sky, where
distant grass blends blue
into hazy light.

Instead we have to consider
the exact shade of pink on
the side of a scree slope
at dusk, the form of
clouds scudding by
overhead.

We, who lack the
privilege of broad
vision become crafty,
investigators of clues
left on the landscape and
observers of narrowed
lines of sight.

Writer's Island: Dream

This week's Writer's Island prompt went in a strange direction. What are the thoughts in your head that you hope others can't see?

If I could explain myself
to you, film reel the
grainy close-up of my
internal musings, would
you recoil from the
villain I would reveal,
the selfish motivations
and double-crossings?
Or would you recognise
yourself in the frame,
the murmered dialogue
an echo of your own
soundtrack, a love song
played backwards? As
we lie so close at night is
it a small grace that we
cannot interpret
each other’s dreams?

Writer's Island: Unforgettable

Writer's Island this week asked us to think about the unforgettable events in our lives.

When I was 17 I left New Zealand to spend ten months in Holland on an AFS student exchange programme. I had grown up in a small town on the outskirts of New Zealand's largest city, lived in the same house all my life, and up to the day I got on that Singapore Airlines plane the only other overseas travel I'd experienced had been seven days in the Cook Islands with my family. My host mother later graciously described me as having been 'young for my age'. In fact I was extremely sheltered and had very little knowledge of the world outside of my little West-Auckland valley.

I remember how strange it felt to say goodbye to my parents for the last time. I remember walking into the Customs area, looking back to see them standing there forlornly, then turning with a grim finality towards the gate, acutely aware that I had just looked on them for the last time in what then seemed like a very long time.

Not long after I sat with the four other young Kiwis flying to Holland that day. As the plane geared up for take-off I whispered "I can't believe I'm doing this". "Neither can I," said the boy sitting next to me. "No", I countered, "I REALLY can't believe I'm doing this". I was telling the truth, I really couldn't believe I was leaping off that cliff. I was a home-body. Other people's lives made me nervous. I was a picky eater, I was shy. I really wasn't quite sure what I'd thought I was doing when I applied.

Of course I survived. I survived my first host mother, who decided she didn't like me the very day I arrived, simply because I didn't drink tea or coffee. I spent three months wondering what I might have done that would next bring her wrath down upon me. Once it was leaving my towel on the bedroom floor. Once it was putting my jeans in the wrong washing basket. Once it was not eating my liver. On the day I left it was her discovery that I had been overwatering a pot plant in my bedroom. I survived that, I survived the family's trip to a nudist colony, and I survived cycling twenty kilometres per day to school and back, even in the middle of winter. When I left it was because of the tragedy that was my sweet host father's worsening cancer, not because of any admission of defeat on my part.

If those first three months felt like an exercise in survival the rest of the exchange was a wonderful adventure. Joosje worked in a literary bookstore and at home had an English language library full of contemporary novels. She was worldly, considered, and had a remarkable instinct for guiding a naive young New Zealand girl through the world. I learned to get on well with the one host brother who still lived at home. We were the same age, and once I learned that he didn't understand my Kiwi sarcasm we got on just fine. I ended up dating one of the other two brothers, although I never got to know the oldest that well, and my host father and I never really quite got up the nerve to work each other out either. Nevertheless, I had a deep respect and admiration for all of them.

I know that I would not be the person I am today had my parents not made sacrifices to ensure that I was able to get on that flight. Those ten months of my life, although so long ago now, were truly unforgettable.

NB: If you want to read a poem about an unforgettable experience of a completely different kind, check out my last post. After publishing it I realised I had written this poem three years to the day after the event. The subconscious is a powerful thing!

Writer's Island: Haunted

Halloween isn’t really celebrated in New Zealand. Over the last few years there has been a bit of a marketing push to introduce the concept, but it still hasn’t really taken. We’ve never had anyone come knocking on our door. So this week’s prompt didn’t lead me in any seasonal direction. Instead I started thinking about being haunted by things, emotions or events. This is the result.

The Haunting
They say I am haunted,
and these arms that flail
are possessed. My
tongue is gripped with
a grasp that leaves it able
only to roll exhaustedly
in the roof of my mouth.
At night I lie and dream
of healing hands and of
exorcism in the form of
holy embrace and rose water
sweet with sugar.
If there is a devil in me
it did not spring from my
own soul nor from the
misdeeds of my prior
lifetimes. This poltergeist
that chews at me like a
parasite is the lingering
shadow of a dark angel
who was sent to wrap his
hands around my neck at
the moment of my birth and
who nurtured himself on the
laboured reflex of an
infant’s first breath.

You can read more poems on the topic of haunting here.

Message in a Bottle

Response to a Writer's Island prompt from a couple of weeks ago.

The Message
After 91 days and
93 nights he was forced
to admit that there was
no message in the bottle,
just the metallic buzz
of a disconnected phone
and the whispered hum
of the world going by
without him.

So he put out the
empties and filled
the dishwasher with
what was now left of
the good crystal he had
inherited from his
grandmother.

When he went outside
that afternoon he found
there were messages
all around him, inscribed
in the bark of the Pohutakawa
trees and broadcast from
the mouths of the old
couples holding hands
as they walked through
the Domain.

For days after his
release from self-exile
he felt as though he
had suddenly been given
the gift of sight, miraculously
woken with the ability to
speak a foreign language.

Writer's Island: The Journey

This poem started off being about one journey, then ended up being about another. There's a rites of passage element that slipped in when I wasn't looking. I guess it's all part of the nostalgia I've been feeling lately for my early 20s, a period of my life that I've never particularly wanted to remember until now.

The Journey
The brakes that were
squeaking when they
left Picton were
grinding by the
bottom of Takaka hill,
the front right tyre
worn bare on the way
to Totaranui and
12km of potholes
in the metal road.
Three sizable young
women and their
bags in one noble
aging Mini on a
detour sideways
en route to adulthood,
pulling over for the guys
in a rusty Holden with
surfboards strapped to its
roof who knew
that the fastest way
to get somewhere was
to go hard on the
accelerator.
They were singing the
Ballad of Lucy
Jordan because of course
they knew that the
warm wind would always
blow through their hair
and that all of their
dreams were due to
come true in the crest
of a wave hitting
sand in the year
that they all
turned 22.

Please visit Writer's Island for more poems and other musings on a theme.

Writing from an Island: Imaginary Life

The writing's been tough of late. I know I haven't been feeding my muse, and so it's all my fault. I wanted badly to contribute to the inaugural Writer's Island prompt, but I just couldn't pull it together in time. I'm still not happy with this poem. It's very rough and I don't think I've managed to express the idea I was trying to convey very clearly.

This poem came to me while I was hanging out the washing on a single line we have strung along our veranda. There was a single spider web above the line. It was covered in dew and was newly spun, so it was perfectly intact and symmetrical. It occurred to me that it would have been easy to have missed it if it had not been glistening in the dew. That led me to further think about how many things of beauty we miss every day.

Passed Unobserved
There’s a spider web above the
washing line this morning,
hanging with the frosted symmetry
of a snowflake.

A few more hours and I would
have missed it, invisible against
a pale spring sky, and any wind
last night would have blown
it away.

You could not see me as
you blundered past on your
way to buy your double black,
running late for work this morning.
But catch me in the right light
and you will see my glass
slippers and my eyes …
my eyes glint ruby red.

This is my life,
not hidden, just
secret.