White horses
at the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra 

The percussion rolls in / and
out / in and
out the swell / a perfect swell / an ocean growl
so deep / and she is fine
on the edge of her folding seat 
next to her friend / and the girl in the story next
to her friend / the pilot who invited her
on this gig / the symphony thickening / with opening
courage / and PTSD in the hooves
of the ocean drums / and the flying girl / and the
ocean rising to the sky flute / when the girl /
returned from world war one / turns / between notes 
to pick up her handbag / it seems / but
lifts the handle on the exit / door to the airstream 
over Cook Strait / the rush of cellos
she leaps out / into the horn of the sky

the air is not the ocean / it is a piccolo 
she is rushing / through blue air and tinkling
but the air is the air is the air
until it is

a long flatline so hard / a body can fall through

how long it lasts / how small a suspension
my friend’s arm against mine / 
in the clang / the pilot must drop /
to look for his friend / in the ocean /
and there are only / white horses

the complexity of a galloping drum / he circles again 
and again / and everything is lost
the heads of crowds / the marvellous conductor
until there’s only a stampede / the
swell / of all those beating hearts 
on the edge of their folding seats.

Gail Zing

This one is FOR the CSO for telling this NZ story in music, about a nurse (Viva Farmar) who survived WWI and came home to jump out of her friend’s aeroplane over the Cook Strait a while later. The friend, the pilot, described that all he could see was the white horses or wave-tips in the sea, she was completely gone. I was so moved by the music that captured this tragic story I wrote this poem – art inspiring art, connections on connections across time.

Gail Zing is a Te Waipounamu author of three collections of poetry, including Some Bird, selected for Best Poetry Books 2024 by The NZ Listener. Winner of both Caselberg and NZPS International Poetry Competitions and placed in many others including the 2025 Fish Poetry Prize and Hungry Hill Political Poetry prize, her work appears in Poetry Aotearoa, Cordite Poetry Review, Poems for the Planet, Stone Circle Review, Catalyst, Landfall, The Spinoff and others. She is a freelance editor, including previously for a fine line, Flash Frontier and takahē, and she teaches at Write On School for Young Writers and Hagley Writers Institute. In 2025 received a residency at Robert Lord House in Dunedin. See more here