SUPERMARKETS ALWAYS MAKE ME CRY
The emblem of the South
Island Spring
is the Kōwhai, loud with birds,
dangling
brazen chimes in golden chains
and
full-throated glissandos.
Spring is on strike,
Winter is procrastinating.
The carpark at Eastgate
Mall has the most remarkable
view of the Port Hills.
When the
clouds close in
as if the Patupaiarehe have emerged from their shadow
realm
dragging
the daub and wattle of fog with them
the
battered ramparts of Castle Hill disappear
and
the TV tower on Sugarloaf
is
just a crimson pulse bleeding through the murky mirk.
When
we first met you were new to town
and
after coffee we walked about some, and then you wanted
to
go to the supermarket,
the
whole time I was secretly lusting, ashamed of the joy
of
our hands accidentally making contact.
Our guardian angels
must
have looked askance at each other as their wings brushed
as
they fled separate catastrophes in opposite directions.
Thereafter
often when we’d go
to
some out-of-the-way eatery or some event for my sake
we
often ended up at supermarkets.
That fortnight you stayed
and
we platonically shared a bed, we bought groceries together.
What peaches and what penumbras!
I
guard those memories jealously
like
a rare spirit of aetherial salt so precious and volatile it must
be
kept hermetically and contained in quicksilver
only
to be viewed by winter moonlight.
That’s
why supermarkets always make me cry.
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