P.O.W.

Your old cobbers
used to come and visit
sharing POW stories
of camp radios and forced marches

You left New Zealand in your prime
the enthusiasm of youth
and memories of bicycle trips
over the Canterbury Plains.

Never sharing the pain of Crete
friends lost in the beat of battle
captive in your memory
as strong as the barbed wire that encircled you
for four long years

You shielded us, your children
from the realities of war
and the horrors that you saw

My father returned a man
with hearing lost from bombs on Crete
clutching still a battered violin
and thoughts that would not find him
PEACE

Roger Smith
October 2019

On Falling Towards England

On the day Clive James died
I went outside
and picked some weeds
Who knew a poet could be so funny?

his youthful wild life
never stemmed the words
that flowed with ease
and a suffering family left to please

Clive was a witty man
where wit was a virtue beyond wealth
he fell towards England
yet lost the battle for his health

R.I.P Clive

Fishing The Waitara

You could tell the mood of the river
offally bad
pungent and blood shoot red
swapping yarns as we jagged with home made treble hooks

The flash of an elusive kahawai evading the lure
hand over hand
jerking taut for the hook-up
sometimes successful

Not like the boys from Manukorihi Pah
whose sugar bags bulged and wriggled
while I, a novice
vainly jiggled

In the season the whitebait ran
along the banks where white boards submerged
revealed their illuminated bodies
not enough in the can for a feed

Not like the Mokau
where kerosene tins of the bait
captured by the shoal
reward for those who chose to wait
in the early grey light of a Taranaki morning

It was the Waitara where a  flounder
captured the imagination of bigger things,
a bonding place, of solace and muddy meditation

Roger Smith
August, 2018

Whitebaiters #1 - Artist: Roger Smith