New Zealand Poetry Society
TE RŌPŪ TOIKUPU O AOTEAROA
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Poem of the Month
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a fine line
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Supporting and promoting poets and poetry in Aotearoa
The New Zealand Poetry Society Te Rōpū Toikupu o Aotearoa supports and promotes poets and poetry in New Zealand. Established in 1973, we engage with individuals and communities across Aotearoa who share a sense of curiosity and excitement about poetry.
Poem of the Month
LYDIA DRAPER
If a walking frame falls in a field with no one watching, does it make a sound?
A gust of wind hurtles – teeth bared and snarling – into the walking frame
We fall on freshly cut grass, wheels and head spinning
The field has come down with a serious case of children
Row upon row of wriggling DNA, little petri dishes of competition
I sit in the spot where no one saw me fall
Grey clouds gather. One taunts, ‘The world is so much bigger than your fallen walker’
Is that so? Is that the only wisdom you can share after billions of years of watching, of floating up there? Is that all you can tell me as I scrabble in the grass and search with growing desperation for a way to stand up? How will that help me, clouds? Go on then, gather, see if I care. Gather so thick you turn black, a pitch black mass from here to the Pacific. Smother Tūturu, Taranga, see if I care! What are you waiting for, clouds? Go ahead, rain on me. Better yet, lightning strike me. Do your worst, your deepest darkest cyclone worst, tornado ripping the air above me, around me.
Go on. Try me.
It’s nothing on the clouds I have inside me.
Up walks Hannah – unflappable Hannah – and sits on the freshly cut grass.
Beside me.