To Oaro M

Heading north by north east
into the nor'west,
all my ghosts
horde behind me.

The dusk is pink dust
rolled over the ocean,
the sun is a torch flame
licking the hill crest.

Everything seems serene
in the hot wind huff
along the shoreline,

but the black rainbow
bleeding down from the clouds
cannot be ignored.

My dead mother's voice whispers
from the brown plastic bowl,
the blue and white tin bread bin,
every fibre of carpet and curtain,
every glisten of paua
and curve of driftwood
in our old batch on the coast.

The moon peeps a blind white eye
through a chinked lid of sky -
like memory
it refuses to die.