candle by Hinemoana Baker

I.



By the time I reach the basket
of rose petals

held by the young girl with
the green sash

there are none left. Still,
she holds

the basket out to me



like an air steward offering
sweets

in the last fifteen minutes of
the flight.

I breathe in the smoke

of myrrh from the censer

and breathe it out towards
your photograph.



If this were a waltz it might
go something like:

in

Eastbourne by Helen Jacobs

1
It is to the island
and the coastlands
that the shifting light
tethers on a fluid line
weaving water and sand
and rock.

The point of going away
is always to come back �
thrice deny, and you
come back

to the shells of your sandheaps,
allow that there could be
an old spirit or two
or simply an old love affair
with the harbour playing you in.


2

Climbing to the houses
you look down to where

Digging in the garden after dark by Pat White

for Seamus Heaney

this morning the blade bites clean
through soil turning up, on the way
worms, spiders and a surfeit of others
at work in the everlasting dark

the news is it is your turn to spend
some time with them, nothing is ended
changing places perhaps, but ritual
recognises impact on those left behind

bespectacled vultures might pick over
the life�s efforts, determine what�s
worth

Palmy by Jennifer Compton

Some injudicious thoughts about this city. Nothing else
can be written.



I perch in my flat on top of the Square at that dullest
hour before dawn,

wreathed in Happy by Clinique For Men from Farmers in the
Plaza.

I lurk in the mirrored department of luxury and when the
girls go off

to mend their hair and drink tea I spray at random. I love
perfume

but don't want to smell the same night

The Gift by C. K. Stead

Allen Curnow 1911 - 2001

Brasch in his velvet
voice and signature
purple tie

complained to his
journal that you had
'interrupted'.

I wasn't sorry.
That was Somervell's
coffee shop

nineteen fifty-three.
Eighteen months
later you and I

were skidding on the
tide-out inner-
harbour shelvings

below your house
from whose 'small room with
large windows' you saw

that geranium 'wild
on a wet bank'