Wheat in the East

The body you gave me’s wearing
thin: I won’t patch a scarecrow’s
coat. The plains of the east I tilled
are stippled with wheat; magpies nest

in the hair of my head, my heart is
all marching feet. This night I lie
beside my wife; the moon creaks over

the sill: I breathe, “You’re a tinny sod!”
and tilt in the coffin of sleep. I dream
of what’s left in this sliver of life,
the reins my hands can’t reach.

Jeffrey Paparoa Holman
London 1993

 
This poem was written in London in the mid-1990s, at a time when I was working in a central city bookshop – Waterstones – and devoting myself to writing. Short stories and poetry, going along to writing programmes at City Lit adult education centre in WC2H, and making friends with Dylan Horrocks, also at the same Charing Cross Road branch, doing his drawings and cartoon strips in lunch breaks, evenings and weekends. We all now know the result of his apprenticeship to the art. Quite when or why this poem emerged, it’s too far gone to remember, but it’s fair to say, is part of a self-appointed midlife apprenticeship to my lifelong writing urges. It was time to get serious and ‘Wheat in the East’ belongs there. 1997, I was back in New Zealand for good – in both senses –  returning to university to finish a rusty, abandoned 1970s BA. I decided the following year, to put together a self-published 36 pp chapbook, with Johnathan of Molten Media as my guide. In 1998, we produced Flood Damage, where this poem, with many other London-birthed works appear.  I was away. There was no stopping now. I couldn’t know it, but I was on my way to publishing what became As Big As A Father, with Steele Roberts, in 2002. The title poem here had also been written in our London council flat. This poem was part of that journey, so resides in my heart, with affection.

Jeffrey Paparoa Holman writes poetry, short fiction, history and memoir. He has published seven volumes of poetry; Best of Both Worlds (history, 2010); The Lost Pilot (memoir, 2013); Now When it Rains (memoir, 2017). As Big As A Father (Steele Roberts, 2002) was shortlisted in the Montana Book Awards, Poetry, 2003. Best of Both Worlds: the story of Elsdon Best and Tutakangahau (2010) was shortlisted in the Ernest Scott Prize, History (2011, Australia). His most recent work, a family history, Lily, Oh Lily – Searching for a Nazi ghost, is published by Canterbury University Press.