I wasn’t going to post anything today. Life is overflowing with bends in the road for me at the moment, where I can’t exactly see what is ahead. I have been musing on the bends in our road and how I love them. This was me out walking yesterday, in the brilliant blue-sky day, breathing in the clean air, savouring the after-storm gleam. Straight roads would be so much less satisfying. Bliss.

At the start of the year I decided to write things (“psuedo books”) with scant if any aim to get published again. It is is liberating, to write out of a love of writing. But against all odds, on Wednesday I agreed to write a piece for Newsroom on floods and Covid-19, even though I live on a safe hill in a bush haven, with an ability to fill my days with no sense of being locked up or locked out or locked in. Yet life is not normal – I am constantly under threat of deluge.

The floods this week have been devastating for some families. But what has struck me is the way communities come together. I belong to three private communities bongos out west and the support is staggering. None more so at my nearby beach, at Te Henga. The houses there are still cut off, but the community is strengthening a strong support network. I see this happening so often in the time of Covid. Individuals doing astonishing things to help those with unbearable challenges. The 100 plus nurses heading to Auckland to work in hospitals. Wow! The bus drivers who keep going to work despite abuse. The way South Auckland faces unforgivable and ignorant racial abuse.

Poems are a lifeline. Like I say in the piece, poetry is an energy boost for me. As are our poetry communities.

Next Friday I will starting a new season – I am very excited about it.

My full Newsroom piece here

‘Monday night and the rain and thunder are loud and relentless. Uncharacteristically I am tweeting that I am scared. I never do personal tweets. I have never tweeted I am scared in a storm. Maybe it is the intense noise. We are watching tv, but the tv reception is on storm fade, and I am missing the final of Australian Master Chef after months of viewing.  This is upsetting me as much as the storm.’