A View from the Port Hills [II]

(MS-704/22.91)

The town’s as flat as a drawing-board;
The remittance men who built it on a bog
Must have been drunk! Like me then. I smashed
My friends’ lightshade with a Navy sword
And piddled like a dog
On a tree outside the Valley Inn. Unfleshed
I come back. In ’48 this broad
Land of drenched willows, riverflats and farms,
Carried me in her placket like a child
Unborn.
I dreamt the wild
Green earth could hold us lifelong in her arms.