Ill Feeling...
It’s always there between us
A fat toad
Silently waiting to squawk
We both feel it
Yet never mention it
It could explode
Become a bomb we cannot defuse
So we hope that time or tears
will wash it away
Well it may....
but one day
Whether we want it or not
It could squawk.
At St Mary’s College in Wellington, in addition to spending hours practising the piano, I entered a national poetry competition. “Nothing is,” I wrote, “what is cannot be and not be”. That’s nailed it, I thought, on the tram going to school. Unfortunately Sister M refused to enter my poem. Both I and the poem were a disgrace. We were shocked. She never displayed passion but, that day, she had an important message. She thought I had dumped God. I hadn’t then. I was blatantly and badly channeling Gerard Manley Hopkins. I continued to write, and you can read my poems (so far) in chronological order or you can browse the list of poems A-Z.