A Southerly Change

Childhood  I I have etched in my mind Pictures of that childhood time Scenes and smells and sounds Images fixed in memory Burned deep by the New-Zealand sun That light bright antipodean sun In that first town  Split top to bottom end By hot tar road Lined with dusty shingle verges and Wooden tin roofed houses squatting  Behind lawns of parched southern grass In that first town the hospital on the hill For women having babies Sat above the statue with names and flowers For men killed in Europe’s wars In that first town the shops dotted along the road Had rails to tie horses  That were no longer ridden or lean bikes that were And pubs one at either end of town For ease of access for men  And women of a certain sort In that first town  The old lady In whose garden reminders of the never known northern land Mixed with indigenous flora in cheerful jumbled profusion Cabbage trees and cherry trees flax bushes and rose bushes

He is defined by the fast flowing crowds Shoppers mark the place  Swirling sideways and around Leaving a physical space  Marking him alone among the millions In the void they leave The source of the turbulence  Has laid out his life in the street A pile of ragged clothes that look As he might look asleep Plastic bags cardboard box No shoes no home no keep Young handsome face Matte grey with street grime Dark eyes steadily gazing inwards Earnestly communing with his companions Striding back and forth Head and hands swinging In time to some internal rhyme and reason Each lap choreographed by his confusion Twelve paces one way, twelve paces back And the tongues inside and out click and clack Briefly those dark eyes connect with our world Not in recognition of this other side of life Just a discarded cigarette butt Jettisoned by someone in the clutter of humanity Breaks his stride and makes him stop to snatch it up Faces i