I guess it's o k to preempt here what I supplied to the publishers:
Life had come to a point of burnout culminating in an accident and badly injuring my back. Just by chance though a buyer approached wanting to buy my lifestyle farm and as a part payment came a cottage on Kawau Island, which is a small sub-tropical island, resident population fifty, in the Hauraki Gulf of New Zealand.
As a temporary step I shifted to the island to take time out to heal and follow my dream of being able to become a full-time poet. Since arriving here, in the next seventeen years I added, to my previous three published volumes of poetry, another four volumes with MEANDERINGS being my fifth.
The consistent theme of my poetry is being a witness to life and capturing those special fleeting moments that can too soon be forgotten. My previous book, `When We Were Old,' was centred on entering the world of retirement. Where we have become too old to be employed in our previous positions and finally we came to acknowledge, and accept, we've entered the final chapters of our life.
Now, after the world of retirement has been experienced, comes the question, what next? Already my closest friends have chosen new paths and scattered in different directions into new lives. MEANDERINGS theme is about exploring, mentally and physically, places and people in preparation to my returning to Mainland life again. There is no urgency, as yet, to make a decision but also knowing it is time to leave this island and find my forever home. I'm open and waiting to be shown, with a complete faith in my long history of unexpected serendipity, and especially how each deeply loved home has been incredibly surpassed by the new one.
Not Quite an Autumn Poem
It's late summer and under
a sky ablaze with blue
it's hot - we loll around
in a fairy-tale trance.
I look at the ocean
but there's nothing to see
-no boats, no birds;
it stares back at me
-only the slight swell
to prove it's real and
not a painted fantasy.
Jiminy Cricket is here - he's
trying to climb into my ear;
remind of chores to be
done before Autumn ends
-but keeps slipping away
on slicks of sun-tanning cream
morning slides into evening
into morning again
how could anyone believe
there'll be an Autumn? We live
in the moment where love
and summer go on forever.
The Man on the Park Bench
You cannot see by looking at me
all the country roads and cities
my eyes re-call and I now name
my own, because I've walked them
step after step, back and forth,
back and forth
listening to voices, collecting scenes,
noting in exact detail: the store
with a blue window-box of red
geraniums on the floor above,
which side of a street gets
the morning sun, the sudden
view after a turn in the road.
I know the sounds of each place.
I know the smell of it.
I know the taste of the food.
And I know how my familiar,
the wind, always walks with me
varying its moods to the place.
I may appear to be loitering
on the park bench half asleep
but my world is expanding
and contracting as my mind
recalls and roams with the wind.
Not Only in NYC
Twice a week a man hips-up
onto a barstool, expectant
of a welcoming smile and
being greeted by name
there's no need to order,
already the barman pours
his triple gin, straight up, no ice.
He's their poet-mascot, another
Ferlinghetti or maybe a Hemingway.
The man considers the restaurant
as his family - who else to talk to
if he didn't come here.
He will push back his glass
for a re-fill - only this once he'll say
with a deprecatory smile
as he accepts complimentary
nibbles; he's in no rush to leave
and weave his steps out onto
the street and climb the stairs
to his one-room home to eat.
Dargaville
If I came to live
in this West Coast town
that does not talk
in decades, but remembers
in generations - I would
come as a barren tree, for
no more fruit can fall
from my limbs. I would
stand with no history
before me, no history
behind me - I'd be
no more than a ghost
in the wind.
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