I

Elaborate forms of urban life, Wellington: swirling trees
aeroplanes pass between, a freshly mown lawn arriving from
three blocks away. As Eastern Europe heads west, school parties
raise and lower the Green Belt, a tour bus vacates the mountainside
and our rubbish bin which disappeared southwards five days ago
returns, clattering, rolling in from the north-east.

II

Where in the wind's high or low room we might find a child's
wind-sock, wooden pigeon or 737, the paddling pool uplifted
from our lawn. This the southerly's argument: snow in the middle
of summer, the departed Flann O'Brien tee-shirt, Golden Boy deck-
chair, Mondrian teatowel, leaves the shape of every country of a
rearranged world, all headed upwards, to god, Saint Augustine,
             someone.

III

In the absence of a whistling stairwell, all we have is air,
air's whistling. Two weeks after Guy Fawkes, a Crimson Starburst
finally flutters back to earth, landing among burnt-out Double Happies,
Mighty Cannons, Foxton Fizz. Considering, late November,
the wind's freight of trees and parts of trees, everlasting debris. And further
north the southerly. Petone foreshore. Where the striped tent went.

(September —December 1990)