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Sport 29: Spring 2002
Waiting for Buller — (after Bill Hammond)
Waiting for Buller
(after Bill Hammond)
i.
Out of the green they filled the room
to the privet hedge, the haha
crushing the hellebore, crowding the car
—everywhere birds were waiting.
ii.
Over weeks they lolled arguing about tattoos
taxidermy and gold medallions
passing Lucky Strikes by the pool table.
Those airheads could squawk.
iii.
Furious, you brushed up the harrowed
canvases of the Canterbury plains
shaggy parched tussocks
trees crisped by nor'westers.
iv.
Later perched on the hill of the ladder
you woke to find yourself alone.
The empty canvases now full, you are
surrounded in colonies of melancholy.