Koru Fallout
A poem about a plateau, a longing, and keeping focused
Where was I last summer?
I was nowhere. As in, tied to my bed, where
I have been set like a slab
Of corpse meat to cure; to anchor in the mind-mud silt
From full to new, too many drunk movings
Now, of the moon
I have sat here, too many years.
When the golds of the earth
Skywards slunk to bleed their bloom through the trees
I had meant to stop clock and seize
Shots in the Bernese breeze.
I missed that one out.
No money, no benefit. Lightning zapped, that’s why
My system crumble-cracked like a tower of Marseille.
Once I lived away. I tin-winged, twenty-six times an hour
Until my veins saw fit to pop and freeze
Every which direction from my knees.
When my legs warmed, I walked. I was so brisk
For fear I’d melt, from panic pressure or
The glut of island love in me.
I trod upon a fern in the sea
With her amusing, you: one, sheep: three,
Orange breeze needle and toothbrush for tree.
The sounds of her sliced
Sunsets into shadows, and love like a locust
Reverberated to the very throat of me. So,
I will last to the last
Drip of this drought, until my flesh is brought out
And I air.
Notes:
“Toothbrush for tree” — see Norfolk Island Pine Tree
“Orange breeze needle” — Zephyrometer (Wellington, New Zealand)
