To My Wife

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.