Tuesday Poem: Two Creek Beach

It's past Fortrose

where the Mataura River

subsides to the sea in oxbow bends

past the golf course

(nine holes, fairways cropped and obstacled by sheep)

east of the headlands

and the perfect place for us.

We've been coming here for years

Dad and I, and now my sister too

past low, flat, flax-rimmed Lake George

to the end of the gravel road

to Two Creek Beach and the sea.

Two creeks — well, they're streams

rivulets

brown-stained with Southland peat

that cross the sandy beach

then a narrow lip of rock

before giving their all to the waves.

Here's what we do: Dad skims stones

I dam and divert the streams

and Sarah —

who knows what younger sisters do

while a dam is being made?

She plays. I'm busy working.

The afternoon slides westward

till Dad says it's time to go.

We crawl towards the sunset

on the lonely south coast roads

sunburned, tired, heading for the comfort

of our tideless inland home.

Credit note: Published in  North & South, December 2005, p. 127, and included in my second collection, All Blacks' Kitchen Gardens.

Tim says: This poem pretty much describes itself. It's one of my Dad's favourites, which makes me more fond of it in retrospect too :-)

The Tuesday Poem: is Aotearoa Runaway by Leilani Tamu.