The Counter-Clockwise Bus

I’m going counter-clockwise around Rarotonga
by bus, looking back to see if I can see Avarua.
I’ve glided down over the International Date Line.

I’ve been up in the sky eating a vegan pie.
They say judge and jury put a man in clink,
but he escaped to ride to glory on a missing Starlink.

And they say Babe Ruth was telling the truth,
and they say Albert Henry is living in penury,
and they say Tom Davis is with Aunty Mavis.

The waiter’s from the Philippines, he wears ripped jeans.
They say the Prime Minister’s out on the lawn,
looking for manganese nodules and carrying on.

So get out coconut shell bras for the airport X-ray,
as travel-weary strangers flood the runway,
while night-time sways like a frangipani lei.

Now I’m chasing a turtle, wearing a snorkel,
then I buy at the market a mat to use as a basket,
while a whale’s barrel-body rolls over off-shore.

In the heat the hotel room’s fan-blades stir,
and the gossip you hear here is beyond belief,
for they say they wrapped an old-timer in a flag,

and sank his expatriate body beyond the reef.
So they hope you’ll make it back next time,
to a Trader Jack’s table for marlin caught by line.

When you listen, the sea’s voicing the answer,
as the sun blurs behind a sinking beer schooner,
while a vaka-team rows out at pace from Avarua,

and going counter-clockwise around Rarotonga.

David Eggleton

David Eggleton, former Aotearoa New Zealand Poet Laureate, lives in Ōtepoti. The Wilder Years: Selected Poems (Otago University Press) was published in 2021, and Respirator: A Laureate Collection 2019-2022 (OUP) in 2023. He is co-editor of Katūīvei: Contemporary Pasifika Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand (Massey University Press, 2024).