A sea-mist spills down from the ridge like-
what can be said? Words like fleece
or cottonwool are not permissible,
these days a poem will not let them in
the sea-mist spills down from that ridge ...
the sea-mist always is sea-mist ... and yet?
Two hawks slip past the frailings of the air
like surfers ducking down to grab a rail-
the sun-aura lineates a wing's leading edge-
the world is full of supple details,
this transfiguration of the real
into some image of that always more.
a cabbage tree
spikes the light
its flowering
spilt like mist
into the
gully
how easily your clothes slipped
from your limbs at every opportunity
that afternoon I watched the mist
coalesce upon your nose your nipples
like honeydew upon the pale hairs
of your forearms and your belly
and in those hollows of your spine
you would not let me touch
though you wanted me to notice
the sea-mist
impaled on flax
bleeds its pale
fluid down
each shining
blade
your eyes are blue beyond this light
that sinks into another knowledge
you have touched the skin of air
a skein of mist the
skimmed surface
of this darkened water in the gully
no one ever saw exactly this epiphany
dark flames
lick the red
stems of flax
flowering
in moist
light
the thin edge of the wind disperses
everything before the light
invests more than is accounted for
you look across this threshold
into possibilities you never realised
existed but in dream or fantasy
you wrap the clouds around
you and begin to sing while walking up
the long track to the hilltop
all afternoon
the north-east
mist curls blue
around
a vestibule
of light
I saw it once in a woolshed near Kaikoura
when I was a child a toddler on the floor-
the grading table overflowing and the evening
light slanted through the smeared window-
liminal amidst the fleece and in my eyes
I saw the poem that no longer can be written.
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