From an accumulation of snaps too long to send, covering my US trip of five
weeks from 28 Feb, I excerpt just these, from the beginning and the ending...
Night Flight (AK to LAX) with RLS
Restless leg syndrome,
I'd rather you'd stayed home.
You need a king-size bed
unless you sleep alone.
Wonky hip joint, you miss
already our Posturepedic
king, new from the Sealy
bed factory.
Here in Economy
squeezed between my wife
and a stranger's still body,
your twitch, your twinge
combine distressingly.
Then I stalk the dark aisle,
old age's walking wounded,
urging with my failing
energy this packed cylinder
forward over the Date Line
to some painfree landing.
Two Homecomings
The first began with the pilot,
after the strange date-line-crossing night,
saying Watch for Whitianga on the right.
Perhaps that's what I saw,
a still wild peninsula,
recalling my callow teenage self,
that summer of š56
at Colinšs place near the sea,
our hopeful talk about poetry.
Then it may have been Howick below,
and Bucklands Beach where my sister
began on motherhood and I lifted high
her baby boy - now well into middle age.
Landing tensely at Mangere, following
the crew's advice about 'disembarkating',
I said to no one in particular:
Auckland, my first home town.
Fumbling forlorn
the public phone,
queuing again
to re-embark on another plane.
Climbing steeply west I could say
Manukau, Piha, Waitakere
(its dam as ever brimming),
and gesture left towards Taranaki,
and that was it, lost again.
The Tasman's vast drifts of clean suds
stretched to at length a long vague coast,
Lakes Entrance maybe, Gippsland,
not my country,
then yes the man-made lakes
of Melbourne's water supply,
looking as ever thirsty.
Their names had faded
while I travelled.
The taxi driver said
Doncaster? which way?
I couldn't think what to say.
My old dog remembers me,
lanky pup welcomes me
but less certainly.
After so many strange beds,
Sealy Posturepedic,
faithfully re-embrace me...
Next day two dark cockatoos,
one demure, one with a red head,
no doubt the male in his pride,
perch pertly on a bare branch
above the upturned eye
of our tall empty bird-bath,
climb our balcony sky to swoop
low then grip again their perch.
Judging by our parrot book,
they're our first gang-gangs.
Put out water, and crumbs, and thanks.
6 April 2006
Max Richards
Doncaster, Victoria
26 April 2006
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