Tuesday Poem: Lit

Here I am passing that gate again,

and behind it the swing and the sandpit

and the deck with named hooks 

and a sink for washing paintbrushes,

and as the sun

fills the glass doors of an afternoon

in winter, spilling over the floor picking out

dust and crumbs,

so in this late afternoon, with no breath 

of air, I see every splinter of that old gate, every

hand that pressed on it, pulled it to,

and I can hear the coming through

of the children, I goin’  to

I goin’ to

I goin’ to wear the prin--cess dress

and the women coming through,

some of them stooped and stopped,
boulders in the flow,

hands heavy on the bolt : cocked

to laughter, crying, running feet, and there

I am

walking towards myself, red paint

on one cheek, hair long and thick as a pony’s, 

holding the hand of a tiny boy who chatters

and the foot of another who bobs 

on my back sucking hair, and I’m smiling, I think,

and I’m tired, I think, but

I am most like this billowing opera of light

that is everywhere in this failing afternoon,

seizing each hair, pinking each

fingernail, singing of the sweetness

of new skin: I am fearless,

I am full to the brim, and I am cantering past, heartless

and fast, through the gate, up the path, over the dark, obliterating hill.

                                                           

Mary McCallum

________________________

I wrote this poem so long ago and I've just been redrafting it, and I do believe it's still a draft. All my children went to the local Playcentre where we spent 12 years in all  (for the whole family joins and is involved in running and maintaining the place - including running sessions for the children), and the poem is about that lovely place, and walking past it some time after our last child had left. 

The poem needs more work to bring it together but I have contract writing work that is whispering hard and fast in my ear  'me, me, me!' I will leave 'Lit' for now and see where it goes... How lucky I've been to have more time to write poems thus far this year. I will have to grab the moments now, wring them by the throat. 

Click on the quill in my sidebar to take you to Tuesday Poem, the hub, and a poem by Graham Lindsay courtesy of David Howard. Very cool indeed to make the acquaintance of both these South Island poets. And have a happy Maori Language Week. Kia ora!