Schoolhouse Bay

I am wearing poetry
like an overcoat. No, a thermal singlet.
I am wearing the wind off the uppity
waves and the green leaves that skim
and the black-barked beech
and the cobbled light.

You can’t see the poem.
I can see the new generation bush
and a single fantail that flits
like a dandelion wish.

My thermal singlet is heavy with ghosts.
It is only the start.
I am picnicking in the thought
of a young girl and her skipping road.
She looks through the high window.
She draws a tōtara tree with her sharp pencil.
The grey sky is out of reach.

Does she know the queens of England?
Does she wear a velvet dress to match the inkwell?
Does she hear the raucous tūī?
Can she pick Istanbul on a map and draw a rectangle?

The porthole slams shut in the wind.

Paula Green
from The Track, Seraph Press, 2019

Mary Cresswell’s wonderful review sent me back to reread The Track and it was just what my frozen writing pen needed. To be delivered back into the arms of writing is a precious thing indeed. I put all the names in a hat and picked out Jan FitzGerald to send a copy of the book. it is now out of print sadly and only have two on my shelves!