OMG!

I got an email today to say my poem, My Light, has been nominated for a Pushcart! Here is the poem. It's one I'm especially fond of:


My Light



Could I take your hand?
In my mind the skin feels
         uh
too close

walk with me
there’s this fence
one two three …
five strand wire
and sheep

amidst the sunlit grass
blade by blade step through
step
how the hillside climbs
away in rolls and slides
tracks and shelves
where the sheep trail
little feet climb

from the top
where the Maori cemetery
hushes your mouth      gaze
out to the glass horizon
where the whales boom

I want to show you
            the sea wall,
the tiny huts two beds bunks
outside dunny

and the wood pigeon
carrying the sound of five hundred
journeys in each wingbeat
downstroke
fat with plums

show you the cut cross
clean above the salt bones of driftwood
sparking up the dark

take my hand
I'll try not to mind
how close you are

see the morning rise?
This is mine.