HERE.

Although there is an easy poem about the rain

on a sheet of corrugated iron, and the vain

attempt to recreate its little tune

in some far basement; and although we once

all took ourselves to be immune

to vulgar home thoughts, being of a freer

cosmopolitan generation, now there runs

a nagging theme of 'here' across my verses.

If I had to be an old man over here

years later, exercised by nurses

in this garden, I would like there to be

one of those pink, delicate

mountain pepper trees.

~

more about the here
that is New Zealand, here:
New Zealanders

~

words: Nicholas Messenger, New Zealand
photo: Smitha Murthy, India