A Book of Poems - The Kowhai and Me

The Kowhai and Me 

This is a collection of my poems some from New Zealand, hence the title and others written in the UK.  To explain; the Kowhai tree blooms in Spring producing yellow, hanging bell-like flowers the native Tui bird loves.  It is the signal that Winter is past and, if the air is not already heady with new, fresh scents, it will add its own to the warming atmosphere and balmy airs.  Many in New Zealand take the tree for granted but as many quietly appreciate it, and in Auckland look forward to the magnificent Pohutukawa with its deep red Christmas blooms and dark green foliage. The Kowhai is a subtle tree that, to me, along with the felled Kauri and the marching Radiata grown for its building timber, was all part of the symbols of colonial occupation that belied the phrase "New Zealand is like a little England" - it is not so; it is nation built from colonists who in their own way "discovered" the land and made it their own.

The Kiwi is a different person from the British - Auckland is a Polynesian  City, as much as it is a Maori homeland changed by the influx of English with a view to settling, and the Irish whose migration in the 1840's included New Zealand.

The language may be English but more so now it is also Maori, and although I use my own language, English, in these poems there is smattering of Maori words but I am a colonist, living there as a paid guest who grew to love the land and the people who belonged there.

However, here are two poems: the first in memory of an evening spent with a good friend and the other a brief glimpse of the city seen as I walked from the University to catch the bus home.

A lighthouse house

we sit, 

you talking to your deaf mother

I sip your wine

I watch the sun kiss the pines goodnight;

cooking whispers seductively through 

my thoughts and catches the sea breeze;

you place the telephone out of reach

and we put the world to rights;

you feed me steak and baked potatoes

with salad and fresh beans;

I pour wine into glasses

( I could carve the meat if you let me )

we drink to Bean Rock;

you read my poems; 

I trace the moon 

through a window and imagine

I am a howling dog

or a wolf in the trees;

sometimes the day is like that

(Dinner with Pat Newcomb in her house on the cliff at Torbay on the North Shore. The house was designed in the pattern of Bean Rock Lighthouse in Auckland’s Waitemata harbour) 

sometimes the day is like that

 Auckland City

Albert Park

Like stone washed jeans, grey boughs

sway, windswept palms guarding,

a tranquil retreat from raucous

grinding traffic.

Jealous of lovers’ trysts

And quiet contemplation

this is my city - bathed in sunlight:

washed in winter rain -

in the streets

from chrome plated stalls

and plate glass windows, hawking wares

paid for by traveller’s cheque

a hundred fountains

in gardens of a million flowers,

and the chatter of a hundred tongues.