KORU

And the seasons course around

and uncover the tracks

A holy relic here

a discarded berry staring at a brown sky,

its back supine on a fence post.

Holiest sanctuary—

the posterior veins 

water washed the grey hills

the kind face of the mountain 

Consider

A jar filled with the curving koru shells,

how white and delicate.

How I mourned ways

the strange paths you took

and how I coursed through the fields 

all whiplash and sullen silence.

How sometimes the sunset emerges triumphant,

sometimes hesistant on the road back

when I am driving—

which I said I wouldn't.

I was emphatic

and the road coarsens and passes by,

the patience of this time.

The days of heaviness in the fields,

all around all day permanent weight,

your sullen summer,

I am considering haystacks

how the weight of them is a warning.

Without the rural idyll;

cast it off,

it has no need for you.

There I was—

temporarily Apollo.

On the quad bike aflame,

my bedsheets a trammel.

And falling everywhere,

my body darkened in the sun and hardened.

And the weight of the confusion

is the heaviest of sunsets.

Curving around

and placed into a jar.