Bull Island
The self is not the self,
Which alters when it alteration finds,
At least for the length of stained glass footsteps
Burnt into the pier of Bull Island.
We walk further north than the known warmth;
A white line crossed and broken,
My father’s words lost in the returning
And the horizon lying awake.
The pier faces the sea, rigid, with all the courage
That my heart lost, and lacks, and lies
Drowning with the cinders of the sea foam.
But paths wind and weave under waves
And into the marram grass,
Reaching brighter shores, never before thought on,
And rejoice in the knowledge:
The human heart is not a pier.
The Sleepers
From the upper deck of the number
Sixty-seven bus,
On a Sunday in February,
My usual journey home,
I saw them:
The sleepers.
A pair of sleepers,
Pale, through the condensated window;
A man. A woman. Nassau Street.
They huddled together
Beneath a shiny blue sleeping bag,
That was sprawled across a rough
Cardboard sheet,
Almost embracing.
I almost felt their slow breaths whisper
A warmness to the concrete urban air
And seem to calm a little; the hardness of
Constant and insomniac feet passing by.
A shopfront cradled over
Like a mother
Watching over the sleepers,
Guarding the dreams of two chiselled
And weather-beaten faces
That could not have looked
More deserving of sleep.
The bus turned sharp around the corner
At Trinity, on towards Westmoreland.
Seconds and Nassau Street is gone.
The bus sped southwards, determined.
Minutes and the city is gone.
An hour and I am home
But there,
I saw grey clouds on their commute
North, towards the city,
And I hoped that the rain
Would be gentle if it insisted
On waking the sleepers.
