The Grey Ones
Kaitorete
David Gregory
If it is calm it flows from Sundays
slow digestion of time,
from before you could read clocks
were not inside the face, whirring.
What is wrapped in the cellophane sea
pushes only gently
seeing its world blue.
We crunch the sea-sucked stones
searching for those
that colour memories
Like this one
when the youngest daughter,
moving out of the family's long shadow
said, I always picked the grey ones;
so sad, and so many left.
Now she smiles
like a Sunday afternoon.
Land Very Fertile: Banks Peninsula in poetry
and prose
Edited by Coral Atkinson & David Gregory
Canterbury University Press, 2008