When I heard the news I went and stood in a triangle of horses They shuffled, and snuffled, sneezed, then quieted and I was washed with their thick horsey smell. Looking out across their backs, I saw the ducklings too. They have escaped the hawks - for now. The munty horse got out of the paddock, but he’ll be back, I know. When I heard the news I just went and stood in a triangle of horses. Thinking you can’t come back from this. They showed to me there is no sentimentality in this world. I had peppermints. * News was selected for Ōrongohau │ 25 Best New Zealand Poems 2025, edited by NZ Poet Laureat Cilla McQueen and published by Te Herenga Waka │ Victoria University of Wellington’s International Institute of Modern Letters.
Come live with me and be my love upon my old inherited farm. And I will offer TV and bleary eyes and rugby in the wee small hours while mist and moon and owls align outside. I’ll know what nights we might see full moon rainbows in faintly tinted shades of silver. Come live with me and be my love upon this fecund patch of soil And there will be dawns of cold blue light days of mud and evenings softly sliced with shafts of golden green between corded, crumpled hills. and sometimes, heavy dew Come live with me and be my love in the house that I will build for you and there will be rust and junk and old machines and sky and rain and kids and love.
We live in a land islands, actually where a gumboot can be found alone in the middle of the road upright (dropped off a ute and the weight of wet clay landed it just so) And people will swerve to miss it out of respect. So it stands there Upright Antipodean Ozymandian while road cones (the uppity imposters, those orange white-banded bastards shiny-skitey as) are gleefully knocked-over The gumboot Red Band, good brand staunch as yo Nek morning it’s gone bloke and boot re-united All’s well, aye.