Category: Deborah Faith Thompson

 

D’borah

Dal
is for door:
I have hung your fragrance
over the parted veil
of my entrance.

Bet
is for tent floor:
My spirit rolls out
a rug to rest my soul.
There is room for you.

Waw
is for tent peg:
The violent hook that lifted you up
and holds me down like the tree
whose branches grow so heavy
they stab the ground slow.

Resh
is for a man’s head:
The firstborn from among the dead,
you were first to love me.
My house is your house.

Hhet
is for tent wall:
Tall enough to hold me in,
soft enough to carve you on,
thin enough to burn me up
when my breath
has gone.

Jew’s Ear

or auricularia polytricha, is a fungal
name, connoting the ear of Judas who
was said to have hanged himself from an elder
tree, where Jew’s Ears sprout, though here they
grow on deceased Māhoe trees, a.k.a. Whiteywood:

The English named it for its white bark; Māori
for bearing blue-purple berries. Incidentally,
Māori called the Jew’s Ear hākekakeka:
keka meaning ‘lunacy’ and ‘lament’;
hā meaning ‘breath’ and ‘sound’.
What grief did they hear in the

deadman’s ear? His keka
echoing from dead tree
trunks that spilled
violet tears?

 

Deborah Faith Thompson

 

This is the place where life comes to leave.
No sand for sunbathers. Unless they be

washed up remains of trees, twice dead
bones of the earth, parched and stark
in dreadful sunlight.

Unless they be shags watching the fresh river
rush out to the breakers — new threads in the
blanket of water drawing itself onto the sand toes
of the beach — their wings wide open in youthful
apathy as the breeze, breath of the sea, dances

through their damp feathers and rustles
the Toetoe, angel hair, whale teeth, filtering
whispered stories from the ocean.

Was it my great grandmother?*
who one morning felt the tide
of her life coming in to go out,
and took a walk to the shore,
stepping softly in sea-foam and salt

death, her stiffening body wrapped
in a watery pall, then left, arms splayed,
to dry off in the sun.
A swift cure for old age.

*It was actually my great great great-grandmother, Rosina Dixon, who died of exposure on the shores of Foxton Beach. She’s buried in Bunnythorpe cemetery.

Deborah Faith Thompson

 

My reflection glowed in the bedroom window against layers of black
and blue in the autumn evening. Street lights and lit windows were all
fallen stars stretching back to the ranges oppressed by dirty clouds that
formed an infinite violet cloak descending on the town, leaning over its
low shoulder.

Deborah Faith Thompson