I wrote this poem many years ago, about our last house. It was never quite right, and a year ago I wrote it again – a new poem, but about the same subject. Maybe I had a distance from it which helped me. It has been published in the Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2024 and I’ve also recorded it for Paula Green’s wonderful Poetry Shelf website. You can listen to it below.
The moon, surprisingly, is still
hanging between branches.
The last owner walked through these trees
dragging the damp air into his damaged lungs.
He picked up brittle bits of kindling
that he stacked In piles in the woodshed.
They were still there
when we bought the house
from his widow,
because no matter how much he believed
in the enduring warmth of open fires,
the bright flare as twigs caught alight,
pine logs crackling along splintered edges,
his lungs had other ideas.
I can hear him now,
his shoes shuffling through the needles,
the pause as he breathes the struggling air,
his fingers scraping out a bone-thin stick
and I pick it up and lay it on
the stack in the fork of my arm.
