In case you don’t get to hear Airini Beautrais read at the Auckland Writers Festival this weekend – you can hear her reading a new poem.
Listening
Your love’s a country I will never see
again, a horse that will not take the bit,
a dusty dress I am too fat to fit,
(read: passionate – you’d bust too easily),
a box I’ve locked and then misplaced the key,
a post card I will never receive, a hit
I simply missed, a dog that will not sit,
a prize catch on the hook that wriggles free.
But still I am a wide receiving dish,
listening, listening to signals from the sky
until my ears are thrashed. The cries of birds,
the groans of growing trees, movements of fish,
the rumbling earth, crowd out the sounds that I
am searching for: mute thunder of your words.
© Airini Beautrais
Airini Beautrais lives in Whanganui. Her most recent book of poetry is Flow: Whanganui River Poems (Victoria University Press, 2017). ‘Listening’ is from a work in progress, a narrative sonnet sequence.
You can catch Airini at the Auckland Writers Festival:
Friday May 18th 5.30 until 6.30 Homage to the River Upper NZI Room
Friday May 18th 6 until 7.30 Call on O’Connell 90 minutes literary mayhem on O’Connell Street
Sunday May 20 10.30 – 11.30 The Art of the Poem with James Brown, Choman Hardi and Terese Svoboda. Upper NZI Room