Aubade | Greenfinches | Bell | Apology | Highly Commended (list only) | Commended (list only)

Aubade

Bryan Walpert, Palmerston North

The field from my window is darker
than the sky for a few minutes more,
and I wish to explain in what time is left
what I see: strip of street, still lives

of roofs, and the field, green for only
a few more weeks, greener than the tops
of the trees, than the lights that lead
cars from one darkness to another.

The field. It is all straw,
Aquinas reportedly said before dying.
He meant work, ambition, speech,
but chose metaphor to explain

that he could not. The sky is darker
now than the bottom of the boot
of the worker who dug there for hours
hours ago, darker than the cascade

of his wife's hair, their chests rising,
falling in sleep, as in conversation,
darker than the undersides of petals,
the fallen rain of them, the concavity

they make of space, like the cave
of the chest minus the heart's
precious history, its intricate threads,
a tale to whisper in intervals,

a kind of code or forgotten music
we made once in a cave,
before speech, only fire,
a piece of daylight

we could hold to, draw
into ourselves as so many
shades of pain and later piece
out word by word, like tatters

of the flag of another country.
Remind me what colour you wore
those few minutes we thought were
the present. Tell it soft and prescient -

hurry. The world is dark
for only a few hours more. Distinctions
will be made: A field will detach itself
from sky, harden to hay, what we make

of our lives. Dawn. Draw out
its taut wire, morning's fine tension.
Strum the axioms of the hours into
whose arc even now emerge the warm

breath of a sewer grate, the tremulous
notes of a paper cup playing the curb,
a new definition of the word want
trembling like an infant bird at flight

amid the receding fingers of elms,
and the numeral shapes of our bodies,
yours and mine, uncorrected proofs
awaiting again day's relentless revision.

 

Greenfinches

Jeffrey Harpeng, Queensland, Australia

If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error, how much more those who live in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who are crushed more readily than a moth! Between dawn and dusk they are broken to pieces; unnoticed, they perish forever. Are not the cords of their tent pulled up, so that they die without wisdom? Job 4:18-21


Perched in the apple tree canopy
is a DΓΌrer angel. In fact, in this light
the whole tree seems etched
by Albrecht, and buds are aphorisms.
Saturday morning, my daughter
is in the lounge, watching cartoons
while I write in the back room.
Greenfinches are a strange spring;
feathered leaves come in to land
billow in the branches
around the angel's sinewy feet.

The false memory I tell myself into
has my daughter padding up the hall.
When she arrives, where is the angel?
As she watches through rippled glass,
the billow rustles. 'Green finches!'
she says, and goes. Feet patter
down the hall's chill wood floor.

A moment earlier the angel
with sinewy feet rose,
winched by pulleys
high in the stage-works.
Its dangling feet trailed
as in the wake of a boat adrift.
When my daughter departed
the greenfinches rose
in half a circuit
and were gone.

 

Bell

Laura Routti, Finland

Afternoon pours
into the room, into her
her body heavy with the hour

outside
loose birdsong
notes adrift, shifting patterns

her body heavy with the hour
setting hard, fixing the mood
the posture to a standstill

the garden a green bell
her ears blocked
with dry time

 

Apology

Bryan Walpert, Palmerston North

If you could you would
bathe me in it, this (hell,
I will say it) love
that chases all shadows
from the room but yours.
Brilliant. Oh,
there are hard places
to reach: an angle behind
the far corner if the desk,
the inner tip of my shoe,
that swath of rug beneath
the thickness of the door,
places one might not think
to look. I know them,
could map them like the spaces
between constellations. O,
when we met, you asked
what I was like. I should
have told you I kept
night in my pockets.

 

Highly Commended:

The Third Daughter, Sarah Broom, Auckland
Talkin'Blues, Cliff Fell, Motueka
If we grew back, if we grew down, Tim Upperton, Palmerston North
Hen, Jane Weir, UK
The Odd Sock Exchange, David Williams, UK.

Commended:

If you dream of a ladder ..., Helen Bascand, Christchurch
DROWNING THE WATERFALL, Claire Beynon, Dunedin
The world also is a place, Michael Harlow, Alexandra
Nachtigall, Alice Hooton, Mairangi Bay
Shaking, Catherine Moxham, Palmerston North
Doggie Bones, Vivienne Plumb, Wellington
A dullness that will not gleam, Tim Upperton, Palmerston North
INSCRIPTION, Rae Varcoe, Auckland
Who was that last sentence again? Pat White, Masterton.

 

 

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