Sassere - forgotten trees

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Sassere - forgotten trees

online poems

(some of these poems do not appear amongst the forty or so in the book. These bonus poems are followed by an *)

Forgotten trees
take wind and sand
along the shore
behind the dunes,
lost on this long coast.
Once planted here
row by row by row,
but now
no one comes this way

Dun birds
Carry straw
I am watching winter rain on glass
*

Karaka
Leaves were
Coppered by sunset,
As gathering gulls
Lost footing from
The Lamposts

Sweet pine odour
Drove smiles across
My girl's face
Flax and sand
and birdsong
Let her skip
While I followed
Carrying the bulging
Wicker picnic basket
*

I wonder how you
Can just stride
Eyes on the horizon
Through glades
of
Daisy showers,
Butterflies, brief ballets
and
Nutty woody smells
Heartrate raised
Timed return to the car
Parked under a
Golden maple

Eyes on horizons
which are fleeting
and my mind
seems to travel
with bird, bats
beetles and Boeings
*

Seven years old
she swung from the
shivering branch singing
an old deep song she thought
was all about
swinging

As if I could
remember Tinakori
Hill on the wide town
belt
As if I could forget
When two dead men
lurched from the
shadows, not there
but in my head
enough to make
me tremble, then
flee the forest
back to the depths
of the city
below
*

Stomached we crawled
from the densest part to
the edge and there,
hunkered, we watched
the night operation
tear holes in the
rainforest until they saw
our camera flash and
we had to run
for the hills
*

From Red Rock Canyon
with rippled folds of
rust red rock, once dunes,
we slid back down
to a city where every
tree, once planted
is manicured

Along highland byways
in backwoods Wyoming
I kneeled in chilled rivers
with rolled-to-knee trousers
I saw bleating goats as
white as the cirrus
and watched the elk
pass, just before sunrise