Lucy D’Aeth

Lucy D’Aeth is an English-born New Zealander, a proud Cantabrian and a graduate of the Hagley Writers Programme. As she grows older, the pursuit of poetry becomes more and more consoling.

September hare at the Hurunui river mouth

lean and spare from winter
the hare surges into a wide loop
anticlockwise, always

mist rises from grass on the cusp of first hay
lush and bashful, adolescent whiskers
lanky in the promise of sun-stained stubble

treadmill seasons grind flavour into the landscape
the hare crouches
sniffs
listens
for the silent traces
the call dissolved in dew
she is driven and mad with spring

carved in her bones
the runes dictate this dance
that first September her stowaway ancestors,
landlubbers who’d endured the waves
danced with relief and rage

long months in the dark holt, salt-scented captivity
then the spores of the old gods shaken out
to dig their toes into a foreign mother
bewildered by the alien stars, they scanned the windy static

the September hare tastes the peppery shoots
aligned to sun and stars, she beats the bounds

untitled

twice now,
I’ve witnessed the murmuration of seagulls
over PaknSave on Morehouse

white against the evening sky
and the yellow of the tilt-slab temple
florid I know
but this is the truth

a real racket
like the tantrum of overtired toddlers

when I lie in bed
I panel beat the damage of the day
the gulls wheel and scream
and melt into the dark

First published takahe 87
August 2016