Go alone. Wait! (another)

Come here. Grow. Grow with us

in the blue rain

We leaned over a varnished ferry rail between wharf piles of North Island and South

all-youngstered in the Strait

—and when I reached a great … age knew mountains, and seven cities and the youth hostels of both spinal islands.

We did not yet know trouble in another’s eyes, we knew: water joy in the immense bay

knew shinnying down spiro spearing

searching silk striated chasms till—moons — eaten

like gum emperor’s empty cocoons.

As if singled out by the heat

nuts and branches sound severalling split!

and it rains it falls

in sheets

tank-filling rain

& the land steaming sickly sane

into the hurrying rivers.

Our ancestors were quickly frazzled

and vanished young,

news arrived of soldiers presumed —

unembraced.

Drought-pucked in a creek

a bed of hot stones

a dried slime-stain—

the Palaeolithic boot-tread of a tramper,

nightstones warm with the heat of sun

a stream watering the bay

this rippleless bay salt seminal.

Go! Alone — wait!

(another)

Come! Here!

Grow with us

in the blue rain.