UP the hillside the houses fan
out like cards, trumps at the top,
to catch the sea glistening like gold
at megabucks a glance.
Across the city, sullen coin
breeds paper and paper stone
and like a riffled deck a ripple
of discontent shakes down from its hillside
the old man's shack, built as a bach an age
ago when a small boat would butt around
the point stacked up for weeks
to spend a summer in the bush.
Now old planks lie in heaps,
paint curling round the grain
like burnt skin while a bare frame
waits, hopes for happiness locked in
to its tilt to sea and sun.
Soon the pictures in a pile of glossy
mags will yellow and the brick
piers will mildew on the page,
the all-white walls and ceilings mould,
but the fleeting thoughts which prop apart
the spaces between Courvoisier and Chanel
will be preserved for years here
ten - thousand miles away
where Maori once stalked the Moa.
One evening in 1940 the steering wheel
of our Morris-8 came out in my father's hands
and we drove up a bank with a trayful of black
market eggs in the back and flipped over.
We lay in the gloom for a while
with egg yolk dripping from the floor
and my father's eyes followed each slow
yellow strand holding back tomorrow perhaps
which would come with no egg to savour.
Or more likely rehearsing his story for my mother.
After a time he called out,
"Are you all right son?"