HINEMOANA BAKER
magnet bay farm
i.
What would I know? I’m awake. It’s the sleepers
who rock the creosote cottages on their forelegs.
The eyes of the cicada are beads of brown blood.
It’s one thing to drink water straight from the hose.
It’s another to follow that hose back to the house
back to the tank, to the trough, to the huge cow
with sharp hips who stamps at the sight of you
breath steaming under the stars.
ii.
Birds of New Zealand won’t settle down.
Turbulent in the air, chirping all night in the chimney.
The leadlight window is unstained.
Matai and rimu in the floor, macrocarpa in the canopy.
Leaves dry on their swinging limb, then drop.
Leaves of things are big enough to be visitors
waving at the edge of my view.
iii.
Down in your old flat, Jim
the curtains are pulled
there’s a water-stain on the wall
under the cylinder
and a smell rises as the sun does.
Up here in the main house
we sing into the bones of cows
and the husks of vegetables.
On walks the magpies swoop
at the shiny partings in our hair.
Someone comes who can name the seed drill.
iv.
The cord for the vacuum cleaner won’t reach out
to the van so it’s the broom.
Each surfer raises a dustcloud
each dustcloud a signal.
The Christmas lily moves beside the concrete post.
Jim and his dog used to hide in the old shearing shed.
The carcass of a cat in that shed
gone to greasy bone, then spindles, then powder.
v.
I don’t even have to write about this place.
My body can be an old, soft mattress
in this bay window.
One of the tatted pink flamingoes
on the wall preens itself
the other raises a pale orange beak
to the white-string moon.
Jim wouldn’t care.
He’s got his books.
He’s got his haematology
texts and he’s got his magazines,
his poets, his atlas,
his stockmarket reports.
He’s got his ‘Farmer’ radio, his farm.
He’s got Clyde the horse and he’s got his dog.
vi.
Let’s not mow the thistles, the salvia.
Let it all go feral, let the empty tanks boom at noon.
Let the blowflies and barleygrass whack the windows.