Above trees I can see through the kitchen window

that over the years my parents have lived here

have grown just tall enough to hide the sea

 

I’m watching a bright light that appears from time to time

a brilliant planet that seems to hang over borderlands

of tussock and thistle on the bay’s western side.

 

While I’m preparing their dinner, my wife remains over there

where I imagine her unpicking a mistake

she’s made in her quilt because she’s tired

 

and I wish I could be over there too, telling her to leave it; I would tell her

about how the Navajo stitch a tiny line into their rugs

to show a weaver’s soul the way to leave the work and rejoin the world.

 

That light seems to hover for a few moments, and then

as if it’s made a decision veers away and vanishes

until it reappears a few minutes later.

 

It took me a while to realise it’s only the main flight path into the city

that briefly positions planes to face us

shining into this room where Mum’s sitting before the TV

 

appalled, in the dark, because she’s seeing again, in her lifetime,

the aged, the sick, spreadeagled between mattresses, cots,

a few pots and a chair piled onto carts

 

pulled by their sons along the ruts, through ruined villages

across lands and histories loved and cursed by their unhappy tribes

into open fields of twilight beneath inexplicable lights.

​

Meniscus 12:2, November 2024