NEW ZEALAND

rob_james_berry@yahoo.co.nz

Pavane

No one strolls this solemn light-leeched coast
where low tide leaves
	phlegm-thick mud
	green-smelling mussels,
	the sea’s sour food.

	Out beyond dunes that move,
the harbourmouth’s a
		remote
			line of smoke

that waders stalk. Wind ruffles headwaters
which are winter-slate

bled of colour.

		The surf’s gruff
as it breaks at this wracked coast.

Strong Vintage

In my vineyard
fat cabernet grapes catch sun.

During winter the vines,
knotted as broken history,
spread in cracked ranks.
For the life of me
akin to time’s dead stumps.

But slowly spidery blooms cracked
from the flint-hard root
and burst red,
like blood handwriting.

The haw frost wrote over
a few of the new grafts

but this summer, my
signature is bold
over my land.
 

The King’s Wood

I stride stiles that have
melted in decay,
into woods where mother gathered mushrooms. 

Storms slew the tallest trees she’d have known.
First children gamed over the fallen,
before woodlice, slimed things
were at more serious play.

It seems less far
to the heart of the wood
where kings rode
centuries ago. 

Paths have lost definition.
Leaf-mould, gumboot deep mud,
the cheesy composting smell of wood
sovereign now. 

Where last war’s bombshelters are
ferned over – always illicit places
to smoke out bad thoughts –

I’ll sit. With history.
	With my old times. 

The Pier at East Cape

At pier’s end
assorted rubble grows.
Ruptured lobster pots, tents of
black tarpaulin, a
sun-bled flounder that a gull’s 
				jabbed at.

Where dirty tides slap
the pier’s decaying stilts I sit.
This is a place to think

watch a buoy roil on the current,
the sun smoke like a cigarette ember
		and stub out. 
		
The dark’s sudden, sapphire.
Two trawlers lit like candelabra
move into the reach.
Hear the growling swell.
The creaking pier
lost in black behind me. 

Flood 

The breakwater is gap-toothed
where tides have pulled immense defences of rock
out to sea. 

The fishing fleet’s been immersed
in silt. Hulls wallow, upended

and a lightship beats its silver symbol
away from the sea roads

up river creek churning with jetsam of homes
		baptised by mud.

Bizarre. That furniture stands in Ocean St.
Faces of townsfolk hang heavy as the sandbags
		that could not hold. 

When some children – that don’t know – spill out of
		a makeshift raft
		in a tide of laughter 

it hurts. We shall mop up the havoc.
		Lay out the drowned. 

Kingdoms

A rat slid over my foot
from out of an old drain
cracked and spilling rusty sludge
over the beach. The world was

empty in fanatic heat. Only a kid
cartwheeled
		in a tributary of filth.

Under the esplanade
I dug in my boot
and scratched a line
in the hard sand

dividing my kingdom. Gazing,
as a far flume of ferry smoke
evolved into haze. 

Seafruits

Wet sand slurries over
wild garlic and pale dune
purples. The sand’s 
shifting territory has sunk

barbed wire from old wars;
caught stray solitaries and
hauled them out with the tides.

Here, no memorial takes hold.
Water inundates. Sinkholes open. 
Up on the rocky point graves slide. Crosses
are dragged into the ocean’s groves.

At the tide’s edge
	Watch,
A starfish,
pinned dead,
apricot-limbed
beaded by sand
Being engulfed by the surf.

Beach Ornaments

Summer. Like the smell of peaches.
The sea cuts driftwood sculptures, pegs
skeins of weed to high water mark.

In a rockpool a gleaming coral bead
circles a complicated dance.
Someone’s lost talisman that crabs inspect.
Strange inedible bauble
tides shall suck out to sea.

Later, the beach exhibits a new trophy.
Wood washed up from another continent.
Currents have carved a
		retching, seasick face.
A drowned seamonster. To ornament
	the washed sand.

© All Copyright, Robert James Berry.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.