HARRY RICKETTS

 

Bits and pieces #3 

 

These bits and pieces don’t fit;
so all you can do is make it up.

This patch of blue might be sky,
but, just as easily, deep water.

This bit could be a hill twinked 
in cloud; this a broken stump; and this

the torn cover of a book. 
Mostly, though, it’s a tombola stall

of what look like body parts:
a tooth, a knee, what could be an eye

or something else entirely.
This might be red hair, this undergrowth.

Quite a few of the pieces
seem consistent with an old crash site.

70

 

The prospect hides itself in fog
(valleys, hills, macrocarpa, pine)
a frozen sea you could skate upon.

Listen to the secret palaver of magpies.
Shapes loom like memories, and disappear.
This cup of coffee. That date you missed. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Harry Ricketts has published eleven collections of poems, most recently Winter Eyes (VUP, 2018). He teaches literature and creative writing at Victoria University of Wellington Te Herenga Waka.