trout

The escaped prisoners

This must be
a winter dream to judge
by the length of night required.

We are listening for escaped prisoners.
We question the ouija board. Instead of their location we find
our childhoods are over, we are still
eating our fathers’ meat.

We are listening but we do not hear
words, only opaque echoes.
A dirty apron will never silence our enemies; really
it is a clean one that should set them talking.

What have we done to deserve this
nothing? When the sun comes it will
finger the stones at the roadside, showing us
they are there to be thrown, showing us

up.

1994, 56 Cathedral Square, Christchurch – 1996, Belmont Terrace, Auckland