The last of the largesse

I cross on the crossing
with the red enamelled casserole dish
vibrant, curved and handsome.
As if I am a metaphor from the Bible
I bring a gift to my father’s house
enter via number pad and rise through the floors
just my food, my keys, my phone, and me
to where Dad props open his heavy door
with his body. We kiss on the lips like Russians.
His movements across the floor those of a clay
figure, heavy and half-fired, due to pain in the third toe
of one foot and the second toe of the other –
another of the body’s unbroken codes.
Threatening with gentle unconcern all my past beliefs
he covers the plate of pasta with a tinfoil dish
and places it in the microwave.
Haiga Sofia, all its white-blue space
the orange walls of Petra, those maharajah’s
palaces with glass from Venice bearing witness
to the Silk Road, he has seen the earth’s stone
monuments and watched the progress of his plane
across the rectangular world
its continents like half-eaten biscuits
littered on a dark blue plate.
For dessert it’s cheese and the pears,
dull brown and rounded, Taylor’s Gold,
recommended by his mother years ago.
I will give you a pot of dead hyacinths
my father says – the last of the largesse.

Touche Éclat                                                                            

A liquid concealer slash highlighter
the woman as old as my mother
dabbed into the dark blue indentations
by the bridge of my nose

how intimate
to be touched there
to be seen, her old woman’s face
covered in make up as my mother’s never is

her skin always with a sheen of oil,
brown, though she did burn
sheets of skin we would fight to pull
carefully from her back.

Quoting Lear, had both eyes done at once
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples.
Clear shields dotted with holes taped across her face

her face without its glasses
small eyes and those dark circles
as when the new moon
rendered on the weather app, is shown in black.  

We drove over unnamed hills
covered in rocks like prehistoric animals.
Between the different bays we hesitated
parked, in the end, on a slope

It won’t be clear like your sea at home
a woman had warned us, you won’t see your hand
but still we swam – dotted yachts,
someone rowing their boat ashore –

and dressed, subject to the sudden scrutiny
of family groups, baby strapped to its father.
In the car I retrieved my glasses
which had skidded across the dash.

It was still winter when we swam at Cass
Mum said and, as we drove past a wall
of blossom like a waterfall
white flowers are the best.

Kate Camp

Kate Camp is the author of many collections of poems, including The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls (winner of the 2011 NZ Post Book Award for Poetry) and How to Be Happy Though Human: New and Selected Poems (2020), and a collection of essays, You Probably Think This Song Is About You (2022). Her most recent poetry book is Makeshift Seasons (2025), a new collection of poetry. Kate was born in 1972 and lives in Wellington. Her latest book is the Leather & Chains: My 1986 Diary, a hilarious and heartbreaking journey through the rollercoaster entries of her teenage diary.