far from me on that westward leading road
above the crumbling gorge that checks the Buller
perhaps you rest on the narrow verge waiting
for a vehicle to take you to the coast
I know your route…past Newton’s Flat where
harnesses
and possum pelts hang shaded by a verandah
further on, off a hairpin bend, an empty field
where Lyell once provided for the miner
one time we stopped mid afternoon and raised
a tent
as sunlight dipped beyond the narrow valley
made our way via wooded tracks to tombstones
along gold bearing streams to disused shafts
returning we embraced beneath the shelter
with tenderness and passion refilled that lonely
site
on which had been a seething town where lives
were reckoned up and spent for elusive metal
now desolate…
without you, I am landscape
deprived of living forms that lend it grace
your absence as a tree’s untimely wrenching
from my soil
our uniting a refurbishing…I count the days
the Tasman smites eroded rock, up heaves
potently on flax edged, shingle beaches…
nothing divides us at this point but ocean swells
shoals of fish, maybe a ship…dolphins…
The poem above comes from a new collection of poems and short stories by Karen D Brookes. I chose it for its strong sense of place …in this case the West Coast of NZ. I loved the way she became the empty landscape she talked of when her lover was gone, ‘now desolate…without you, I am landscape/deprived of living forms that lend it grace.’ Karen has been writing since she was in her twenties. It was she that taught me that poetry is a craft in the days when I thought it was a spontaneous outpouring of words. She is very modest about her poetry which has won various awards and been published in a wide selection of anthologies, and magazines including Poetry New Zealand. 
Karen says: Poems written to order don’t work at all for me; I must be motivated by a strong feeling or a line that comes unbidden to take my attention so that I can run with it and I can be surprised by the results. I don’t write to please anyone other than myself. The poems are usually imbued with a strong, individual rhythm.
About her life, she comments, I’ve travelled, raised a young family, had a
variety of jobs and have lived in both the north and south islands, now being happily settled in Golden Bay. I enjoy gardening, photography and tramping and try to combine the last two.
Miscellany is for sale on Amazon
Or if you live in Golden Bay you can buy it at the local bookstore.
gurglewords 