Free-range men

We talk at a cellular level
swift flashing twsits late at night:

I miss u. LOVE.

I am sleeves of jersey knotted around waist.
I embrace you.

I am the welcome swallow darting up to you
from the Tairua River.

I am da nerves.sensing.da.pressure
between yr thumb and pen
as yr ink flows for da next 7 days.
Union.

I bought orange and blue flowers today.
Swoop flit fly riverkiss.

***

You are gone for seven days
so dreaming sends me the last two

in an overnight courier package
stickered International and Fragile.

Inside I find backpacks, skis, bikes,
take me backs in plangent echoes.

The Swede liked his snus
brown gloop dripping from glazed gums:

tobacco, arsenic, glass shavings
for fast uptake and keen avian focus;

the Swiss liked to toke up
on a mix of sweet dazing weeds:

a smokescreen of ganja and tobacco
to conceal angst and access to heart.

***

Without the glister one may expect
after a night with two foreign men,

I send them back to the glory hole:
thick filings, diaries and photographs—

a valued record of hearts in flight
now tidier for their revisiting slumber.

***

But you, you have no Yerba Buena,
just Dairy Milk, psi-trance and body cherishings.

You are the brightest light-emitting diode
in this world of race-through red light cycling.

***

For breakfast I eat a small
soft-boiled egg

whose bedraggled yolk
is pale and overcast.

Five more twittering sleeps to go.

Nicola Easthope
from leaving my arms free to fly around you, Steele Roberts, 2011

Note

‘Free-range men’ is one of my favourite poems because I wrote it when I was a “young” poet (38!) during a year under the terrific tutelage of Renée at Whitireia. From the very first lesson, Renée bust the myth of “waiting for the Muse to strike” and said we could already call ourselves writers but, “it’s hard work, darlings, treat it like a job”. Renée’s warmth, wit, humour and high expectations helped my shy, dammed up poet-self burst her banks (I wrote 120+ poems that year). Another, more obvious reason this poem is a fave is because I was quite freshly in love with a creative man who gave me nothing but support for my poetry compulsions—he’d send me poetic texts, wrote me his first two (non-high school English class) poems ever, and let me write lines of Rumi on his arm (lol). We’ve been together for nearly 19 years. Lastly, this poem won second prize in the (now defunct) Bravado International Poetry Competition out of over 600 entries, in 2005. I couldn’t believe it – winning $250 and getting it published in the Bravado 5 magazine was the biggest buzz and only encouraged me to keep following those impulses. He mihinui hoki to Roger and Roger of Steele Roberts Aotearoa who guided this poem amongst the others in my first collection, leaving my arms free to fly around you (2011).

Nicola Easthope (Tangata Tiriti) is a Pākehā poet with ancestral roots in the Orkney Mainland, Kelso, Holyhead and Shropshire (UK). She lives on Te Atiawa ki Whakarongotai whenua of Raumati South. Currently studying post-colonial literature and poetry through Massey, she hopes to start a Master of Creative Writing in July. Her second collection of poetry Working the tang was published in 2018 with Mary McCallum and team at The Cuba Press. Nicola has appeared as a guest poet at the Queensland and Tasmanian poetry festivals, LitCrawl in Pōneke, and the Manawatū Writers Festival.

Steele Roberts page

Favourite Poems is an ongoing series on Poetry Shelf where poets select a favourite poem from their own back list and write an accompanying note.