Birthday Dinner

We are going to dinner at Nana’s place
so that Mummy won’t have to
cook dinner or do dishes
on her birthday.
We are having dinner early
so that we will be home
for our usual bedtime for
school and kindergarten tomorrow.

We are not wearing party dresses !
How can we not wear party dresses
to a birthday dinner ???
We put on necklaces and bracelets.
Claire wears two necklaces
Chloe wears five.
Mummy says it is time to go !

Daddy does up Claire’s bracelets.
Chloe’s necklace from great granny
breaks a string of its pink beads.
Chloe is so upset !
Mummy has to cut the string off,
they pick up the beads off the floor.
She fastens Chloe’s bracelets
to cheer her up.

Nana rings to see if we are alright
because Mummy was so sure
she wanted dinner early.
Mummy says we will
be there soon !

Now we are all in the car.
Mummy wanted to leave
fifteen minutes ago
but we dressed up because
it was her birthday dinner !!


Previously posted January 2016.

Boys

The girls at our house
love pink clothes.
The lint in the clothes drier filter is pink.
We play with our babies,
our dolls and our bears,
dress them, put them to bed.

Chloe is doing new things
at kindergarten which she
mostly enjoys … except … for … boys !
They put on Batman capes,
they run around after people
pointing two fingers at them
and yell loud banging noises !

Why would they do that ?
Daddy says that’s what boys do,
just as girls play babies and put them to bed.
That’s what girls do. Chloe says
it is not strange to do girl things.

Two boy cousins came with Auntie
to stay for three days last Christmas.
They ran round the house
pointing two fingers at people
and yelling loud banging noises.
They jumped high on the trampoline
and shouted all the time.
Daddy laughed !

Chloe was shocked ! Stern faced
she walked along to the bedroom,
to peace and quiet with dolls
and bears, pink clothes, and
the box full of hair ribbons and clips.

After a time of tranquility
she crept back to the living room,
and curled up on Daddy’s knee
while he hugged her close.


Previously posted January 2016.

Chocolate Cake

Sitting on the bottom step
from Nana’s deck
the three year old feasts
energetically and enthusiastically
on Nana’s chocolate birthday cake.
With both feet planted
firmly on the grass she
grasps her plate on her lap
in both hands while chewing
the sumptuous mouthful.
She rolls its rich moist texture
around her mouth
as she chews it.

She carefully lets go of
her plate with one hand
and lifts her cake
biting into it deeply.
Icing coats her nose, chin, cheeks,
as she plunges her teeth
into the heavenly food.
Her hand grasps her plate again,
only a small piece of cake
now sits in the centre as
she chews the new mouthful,
savouring it happily.

Her father on the grass nearby
takes candid shots
of her whole hearted joy
in cake and icing.

He has several similar photos.
Maybe he will bring them out
for her twenty first birthday.



Previously posted January 2016.

A Ceramic Tile

A brilliant blue sky beach.
A rocky bank crowned with
blazing crimson flowered trees.
Two dinghies upended on their sterns
against that bank.
Children playing on the sand
at the edge of the lapping
aquamarine wavelets
gently plashing to and fro.

The old man stared at this scene
from his faraway homeland
painted on the framed tile
given him by a niece visiting him
after many years’ separation
from siblings he had
willingly left behind.
Now home to him was more
than those siblings as
homesickness filled him.

He clutched that tile tightly
as his children and grandchildren
celebrated his milestone birthday,
telling each one of childhood
memories of the beach near
the home of his large family.

They saw his homesickness,
kept at bay into old age,
now showing in his joy
in this little piece of home.


Previously posted February 2016.

A Wartime Farewell

The young sailor with
his comrades in arms
lined the ship’s railing
on the commander’s orders.
Young soldiers and sailors
of white colonial stock
no crossed two oceans
to support their parents’ homeland
in their fight for freedom.
They left behind the islands
that had become their own home.

On the deck stood a taua,
a company of warriors of the
seafaring race who had settled
these islands centuries earlier.
They too were crossing two oceans
to fight alongside the colonial soldiers.
In ritual chant and dance
they farewelled their homeland.
They called on Tangaroa the sea
to protect and guide them
as he had their tupuna,
their ancestors,
sailing the vast Pacific
seeking new homes.

Many of these warriors
of both races died and
were buried on foreign soil.

This young sailor survived the war,
married in his parents’ homeland.
He would only see his home islands
again at the end of his life.


Previously posted February 2016.

War Effort

The young accountant at five feet four
was dogged, determined
in all his rugby playing.
Injuries to back and knees
not fully healing
worsened with his myopic eyes
lacking his thick lenses while playing.

In September 1939
Britain embarked on war.
The twenty three year old
tried to enlist with his friends
to serve his country.
The army rejected
his bad back and knees,
myopia and thick lenses
as did the navy and air force.

With the old men not accepted
for war he accounted by day
worked nights weekends at
the freezing works in season.
Long days and weeks for his country.
People talked, pointed him out.
An able bodied young man !
He should be fighting !

A white feather symbol of cowardice
arrived anonymously in the mail.

Desperately he applied yet again
to each of the armed forces.
Again they rejected his back
his knees, his glasses.
He returned to accounting
and the freezing works,
long days, weeks for his country.

Another white feather arrived.

After the war his friends’
long days and weeks
on desert and ocean
set them apart from
his long days and weeks
in office and freezing works.

His rugby days with
those other young men
never came again.


Previously posted February 2016.

Mobility Scooter

Walking along the footpath
from the supermarket I heard
a speeding battery motor whirring
behind me, no remote controlled toy
but an elder person’s mobility scooter.

I jumped aside as it shot past me,
a Harley Davidson of Elder travel today.
With four sturdy wheels and
a Star Trek captain’s throne
flying an aerial with three flags
it powered past me, majestic, magnificent.

Its driver fixed me with a beady eyed stare,
a tiny old lady, her only helmet
her own short grey hair,
emitting strong disdain for
people on foot, lugging shopping bags.

She was gone in seconds
around the corner
leaving me transfixed on the kerb.


Previously posted March 2016.

The Last One

A bright sunny church
with soaring rafters,
vast windows, unlike
Ada’s childhood church
did not lighten her desolation.
Outside traffic roared through
the busy suburb evolved
from the beach side village
to which Ada had retired
after her husband’s death
nearly thirty years before.

In several pews sat the senior
citizens’ club, so young to be retired.
Those Ada had first known
in that little village now were
all laid in the cemetery.
Only Rosie and Ada had been left
to ring each other every morning –
“I am well …. how are you ?”

Now Rosie’s children, grandchildren,
filled more pews to farewell her.
Ada had no children, only
a few relatives scattered
around the country.
Who would come to Ada’s funeral ?
More parishioners filed in,
young and middle aged.

Ada sat in the back pew,
in a foreign land,
her own country folk gone.
So many vacant birthdays
and anniversaries of people
no longer there to inhabit them.

Only their ghosts
surrounded Ada.


Previously posted March 2016.

The Lottery

“You’re energetic !” she said
as I walked past her
in her front garden
looking at dead twigs
on shrubs weakened by drought.
She walked slowly, awkwardly,
her body thickened like mine.
Yet she spoke brightly, smiling,
seeming to enjoy the glaring sun
though old age had
not blessed her physically.

I walked past the little front flat
towing my shopping trundler
to the supermarket
as I often do.
They say only old ladies
use trundlers for shopping.
“I don’t want to lose
what I have,” I called.
“Good !” she said emphatically.

We are both said to be old.
My gold pensioner’s card
proves I am old.
the woman’s face looks
not much older than mine
yet her body could not walk
to the supermarket,
to town or the library,
as readily as mine.

Old age is a lottery.
A body’s owner builds a life
around what it will do.
What will that lottery
do to us ?


Previously posted March 2016.

Election Trucks

The candidates’ little trucks are
rigged with canopies and loud speakers
with flashing neon Korean signs.

Cramped under truck canopies
go-go girls in skimpy uniforms
dance in unison
to strident election jingles.

As late night shoppers swarm at
busy intersections waiting for
the pedestrians’ buzzers,
these jangling singing dancing trucks
hurtle along under brilliant street lights.

They careen uphill and down
through residential streets
past apartment blocks,
blasting forth their cartoon rhymes
that deafen late night neighbourhoods.

These local politics commercials
pound our ears
with their metallic uproar
concussing our brains.


How will the voters
disentangle the raucous strands
from the city air
to choose their candidates ?


Previously posted December 2015.