MEANDERINGS

MEANDERINGS by lois e hunter 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. Three Score Years Plus What's this growing agitation I feel? I want to fully experience not only this life but many lives to come. I have faith and a personal proof of varied former lives to know there's a multiple reincarnation of my `I AM' essence, but and here's the but and my deepest fear that I may not have any more lives after this and yet so much more is to be seen, touched, felt, known and is left undone. I've allowed myself to become moored in this safe harbour singing Cohen's Hallelujah a decade too early unaware ( though I exercised and ate with care ) how the body's strength grew less year by year - now strange pains and groans come and go. So, instead of sinking deeper into my sanctuary I'm making plans to patch my hull the best I can, then hoist my sails - and steady as I go - risk riding the outer seas once again. 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. 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.