Tuesday Poem: Take me back to the Bay, by Kerry Popplewell

Take me back to the Bay

1

Take me back to the Bay,
back to the Sixties too —
when what was to come
was certain to be
as bright and wide as the sea.

2

Dust tastes concrete-white;
feet flinch on riverbed and beach.
Heat haze deletes the hills.

Mushrooms erupt in damp paddocks
alongside the distraction of blackberry,
the leaf shoals on shingle roads.

There's a nip in late afternoon air,
snow on Kaweka. In August
bare willows burn orange.

Pink and tentative, flowers
put out feelers on fruit trees,
querying their cue.

Tim says:

"Take me back to the Bay" is reproduced, with permission, from Kerry Popplewell's first poetry collection Leaving the Tableland, published by Steele Roberts (2010) and available from the publisher or in selected bookshops for $19.99 (RRP).

My next post this week will be an interview with Kerry Popplewell.

You can read other poems from this collection which have previously been selected as Tuesday Poems, Portrait: Pahiatua, 1942 on Helen Rickerby's blog, and Leaving the Tableland on the Tuesday Poem hub blog.

Check out all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem hub blog.