It's been great to come across work by friends/fellow painters who have also stayed here... This poem is for them and for Alison in appreciation of her wonderful hospitality.

INCLEMENT WEATHER

Ah Wayne, your vintage bottles

and vigorous Torea Bay paintings! I’m not surprised

to find you’re very present

here. As are you, Don, with your rollicking

clouds and delicate pencil

islands. (I’m pleased to know

you found the one you’d lost; errant pencil

and island, both. I see now how their similarly worn

and whittled shapes might slip easily through

the cracks of the Sounds, your Kowhai

balcony decking.)

And John - of course, you and the shimmer

of your songs hang in the air here, too.

My private desires notwithstanding, everything is

exactly as it should be.

I sleep and eat and write

alone

yet am not without companionship,

conversation or colour.

Of today’s inclement weather, Alison said

“Would you believe we look

onto lilac water some days lit

by sudden shafts of sunlight. But this!

This is grey. Hard, cold

grey and dirty green… And two

walkers still out in it. Best light

the fire, Mark. They’ll need flames

and food by the time they find us,

welcome strokes the minute

they get in.”

Sunday, 30 August 2009