thanks, Patrick.
Last line and a few others need improving.
Don't hold back - if you can skim it again, which is quite a big Ask…
Max
On 06/11/2013, at 6:50 PM, Patrick McManus wrote:
> Max 'today or never I may pause here,'
> that has a resonance with me!!
> Liked the changing times throughout
> Not sure last line?
> P
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Max Richards
> Sent: 06 November 2013 06:57
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: 'Above Manukau Harbour'
>
> Above Manukau Harbour
>
>
> Passed this cemetery many times
> without once stopping, making
>
> dutiful tracks to see my father's sister
> and her husband Uncle Al -
>
> they had been kind to me in my youth.
> Latterly I'd call by when in town
>
> more to marvel how they tested
> constantly each other's patience.
>
> How many marriages come to this!
> Which was the carer each needed? Neither.
>
> An hour of them and I'd be gone.
> Back on the road - that cemetery!
>
> colonists, pioneer graves, were they?
> proclaiming 'We took the best land,
>
> even our dead have the best views!
> Below's a panorama of our making,
>
> prosperous traffic, trading profits,
> a port, a highway, bridges.'
>
> Not to mention power pylons.
> Had I been a camera-carrier
>
> I'd surely have pulled over,
> strolled about, lined up headstones
>
> and the odd weathered angel
> with harbour below, quiet
>
> like time steadied and slowed -
> the Manukau, western, tidal,
>
> opening to the rough Tasman
> somewhere far to the right.
>
> More planes than ships to be seen
> these days, though the port survives,
>
> and fishermen in small boats kill
> maybe more hours than they catch fish.
>
> The sky is always huge, dramatising
> the weather and its south-west changes.
>
> Now aunt and uncle have had their funerals,
> neither graced by me, despite a promise.
>
> They don't lie here - besides, I don't 'do graves'.
> Perhaps they're side by side, in silence
>
> finally harmonious. Elsewhere.
> An hour to spare, a smart-phone in my hand -
>
> today or never I may pause here,
> living out my last years way over the Tasman -
>
> I'm prowling with the camera ready
> settling vertical monuments between
>
> horizontal land-and-water vistas.
> Click. Pause, Save. Try for a better angle,
>
> better framing - click. Is it filed in Photos?
> Try for that moment when a gull flies over
>
> like a restless revenant, here
> a short while, suddenly elsewhere.
>
> The gravestones lean together one way
> suspended still above the sea.
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