July

It is now winter in New Zealand. I wrote this poem a few years back ('stop, step off' ') when I built a house on a block of land that had never had been built on before. Ever.

July

Throughout England
though many hills look barren
or empty
there is a constant shuffle
and murmur: yeasting up
from the sediment under the feet,
misting the air moulding over the skin
-Ancestor whispers;
confirming the promise
that each life has a cycle
of a beginning, a middle, an end
and will start over again.
It is a land where
each man, while alive, is King on the earth
as were the succession of Kings
before him.

I left England five generations ago
-woke upside down in New Zealand.

No millions, or even thousands of ancestors
impregnate my land.
No Kings before me were born
to laugh, to cry, die
into the raw earth under my feet, under my home.
I am the first attempt
to imprint a human culture
onto this hill.

The eternal of the bush crowds in
-trees are the rulers here.
I feel my feet becoming roots,
my fingers, leaves.
The pulse slows, the sap drops.
I cannot resist their edict – hibernation is near.
I’m to rest. Then will come Spring.
I’m turning into seasons – amoral/immortal
in a Garden of Eden.

copyright lois e.hunter