Rummaging through a dusty old box file, I came across some poems written over a period of about fifty years. I've just self-designed and published a book of them through Blurb.com. (Whence they may be bought for peanuts).
'Milestones: Poems from Life' is the title and I thought I'd send you one for fun; it's about my love of New Zealand.
Migrant Bewitched
In bondage to
The shattering silence of shingle wastes.
Inverted fan-vaulting on the slap-slap shores Of matagouri-guarded lochs.
And the devil-dancing-spiralled riverbed dust West wind whipped in lonely alpine gorges, Alluring displays, deceitful, dangerful.
Ant-like files of fat maggot sheep
Hanging on high hills, dogged, head to wind; Follow-my-leadering across the fans.
And day's end trout rise. Tight line.
Life force through flimsy filament and cane.
Camp fire, smoke and sputter.
Ratbag sandfly hovering hopeful, sanguine, silent striker.
What did he bite before migrant man-meat?
Smack. Dead. Too late!
In bondage to
Blue-green ice caves floating though dark wreathes Above the steaming beech. Echo screaming kea, Gaudy, bold, boulder buccaneer.
And all about the tinsel streams hang. Silver vines Feed rivers running brown, grey, crystal to brooding sea Through axe-slash fiords.
I came and stay in happy bondage.