Title: Now

Author: Mary Macpherson

In: Sport 30: Peter Black-Real Fiction

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, March 2003

Part of: Sport

Keywords: Verse Literature

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Sport 30: Peter Black-Real Fiction

Mary Macpherson — Now

page 47

Mary Macpherson

Now

(Scientists tell us that as far as human beings are concerned, the present lasts for up to three seconds)

skids across the rain-smeared bus window—
not in words—but in the crouched
driver hunting black, wet, lit traffic.
Should I stop thinking and watch
pale night faces, but which shape
means something & what is something?
It's like listening to C read, travelling
to a white stretched-out land where
people are descriptions, so when I walk
in the blustery motorway valley, it's a picture
of a road & big red dairy signs on the corner
(not like when it's asphalt & a gap
in the line of cars); or before P comes and we sweep,
choose a picture & the white door opens—
happens so quickly that if there's a tui
or a lizard I don't see them, and even thinking
about a lizard isn't true.