Settlement
The tide thunders
and lays down like broken
courage.
Shingle is stained with seaweed,
Fantastic sea-cut driftwood,
Pulpy matter of summer picnics,
A decayed seabird.
Witness the rusting industry
of fishermen
Who smoke in the gossip of
snugs now.
I smell them reminisce,
These municipal monuments
That trawl in a lingering
tourist at nightfall.
See the woman wrapped in fog
Who waits for the cry of
the town clock,
For the bus to the bright
centre of things.
Four generations ago
Her ancestors edged along
the blustery vein of this harbour
Which was so like, but not
home.
Bogged to their waists in
tussock, swamp, wilderness,
They struck at our land.
The autumn sunshine was chill.
We bear grudges.
A goods wagon grinds across
the points,
Plunges into the cutting
behind First Church
As the iron mandibles of the
container hoist
Cast their insect shadow
into Main Street.
At the breakwater the Southern
Ocean rumbles.
Headlands shove at a swell
Which remembers no history.
The town stills. But we stir,
The dispossessed chiefs and
masters,
Gruff, like thistles in the
wind.
© 2000
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