I can walk places?!!

As anyone who read my last post knows this whole healing thing has been taking a wee bit of a toll. I’ve gotten to the point where enough’s enough and decided to try and sort my mental state out (that’s why I’m sitting at the home computer at 10.45am on a Monday in my pjs). I’ve booked myself some extra sleep ins and my lovely husband and I treated ourselves to the first relaxing, do-anything-we-want weekend in forever.

I won’t blather on about Saturday, except to note we went to Scorpio books and I picked up a New Zealand poetry anthology. *wonders how many of my 3 readers I’m about to lose when I start going on about poetry instead of mountain bikes?*

I’ve been writing poetry on and off since I was 7 and won a poetry contest run by the local radio station in Cromwell. It has been a very long time since I really sat down and wrote poetry, about 2 years I guess. Reading these beautiful, strange, funny and clever poems in my new book has woken stuff up in me and I want to write again. So I’m warning you, this blog will have some poems in it, which is weird for me. I’ve never really shown them to anyone.

Back to the matter at hand. So yesterday hubby and I decided it was time to get out and enjoy the country again. I was amazed to discover that I could get almost the same amount of enjoyment from walking in the bush as riding my bike. We headed out for a very easy walk, as I’m still fighting off a cold, and ended up at Glentui. It was amazing and a bit freaky when we got out of the car. The whole area was humming with bees and wasps, it was crazy. I’m allergic to bees and while in small numbers they don’t worry me at all, when there’s lots around I feel a bit freaked. So this mountain of buzzing was a bit worrying. We had a picnic lunch in the sun and then headed into the bush. The wasps were everywhere, thousands and thousands of them, but all very passive and out of it on nectar.

The forest was gorgeous, however I felt sad there weren’t more birds around. There were a huge amount of rat and stoat traps so I guess that explains it. The whole walk I only saw a couple of bellbirds, 3 fantails and a couple of goldfinches, all birds I can see in my backyard! Damn predators. My lovely husband was a paragon of patience as I was stopping every few minutes to look at a tree, take a photo of lichen, or at the top of wee hills get my breath back. So what should have been an easy one hour walk was actually a very relaxed 2 hour walk, yay! My walk in the bush left me wanting more, so hopefully we can try something a bit bigger next weekend with a few more people (I promise to not to stop every 5 minutes).

And (nervously), here’s that poem…

Glentui Wasps

Forest thrums, whirrs

Electric song, tinnitus hum,

Black and gold army feasts.

Sooty growth

sustaining

Like drunks they stumble

across the path

Their fate at my feet.

Lichen flower

Fungus petals

Dead beauty

worm waste,

Anger dulled, blasé

they fly through me.

Where is the bird song in this throbbing machine?