Tag Archives: mortality

Poetry

The smell of hot bread

Every drop-off then was the smell
of hot bread from the ovens
behind the factory walls, made grey 
in the mind by it always being wet
and dark, head-lights on. 

When I drive past the road today
the smell of fresh baked bread
still breaks out of those same walls, 
now Newberry’s Funeral Home,
where the ovens are hotter and sealed tight. 

For the symmetry, it’s at Newberry’s
I can be dropped-off, on a weekday,
when there’ll be a fight for parks,
everyone oblivious to the smells
and memories of years ago.
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Poetry

Beneath Hikurangi

Cicadas singing 
in the fire of the sun. 
We used to think 

they lived so briefly 
and it was too easy 
for the mynahs 

to catch them 
in their yellow beaks, 
hold them for a moment, 

still singing; 
no wild struggle or hardly 
a change in pitch.

After we learnt 
they lived for years 
underground, it wasn’t 

so bad. Now, listening 
to the cicadas 
in the crystal space 

of early summer,
the hill, always there, 
cut-silhouette on the horizon,

we’re happy enough 
in our grand mediocrity.
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