When an eight year old names a ship...

Like this one:

A big ship, a ship carrying hundreds of cars on it.

When an eight year old names the ship, that giant ship is called "Dream Angel".

Actually...

Perhaps I would have chosen this poem:

Oterei rivermouth

I get to think that God 

is somewhere there between the rivermouth and sea

glistening

helplessly

with only a broad sky a bored dog and me

listening.

SAM HUNT (my very newest favorite, from his new book, Doubtless)

Tears on my face, in my heart

Because of this song (see vid in last post):

Indiscriminate Act Of Kindness :
She came from the cold wet
Dropped her luggage bags
Looked the concierge in the eye
Said, "I need a room for the night,
But I don't got no money.
Would you take payment of any kind?"

He said, "It's alright
I got a room here, you can share mine.
Make the bed in the morning and that'll do fine.
You can change in the bathroom,
Hang your clothes on the line."
A tear came to her eye
She thought how could he be so kind
How could he be so kind (x2)

She sat down on the bed with a needle
He said, "I'd hate to see you bleed,
Just fetch a warm towel,
I'll sit with you til you're dry."
She started to cry
Said, "Why? why? why? why? why? why?"

Consider it an indiscriminate act of kindness.
(x3)

She was cold turkey
He was holding her hand
She said, "I was ruined by man,
This was never in my plans.
I dreamed of men who loved me,
Together we'd see the world.
Somehow I lost myself among the insults they hurled."

"I'm sure your a wonderful woman,
And someday there will surely be someone.
So just relax now, it's important that you're calm."

She said, "How is it you can see past me as I am?"

Consider it an indiscriminate act of kindness.
(x3)

"When you took your chances,
It was like you placed a bet.
And sometimes this is the reward you can get.
I was always taught
If you see someone defiled,
You should look them in the eyes and smile,
And take their heart, no better yet
Take them home, home, home."

She awoke early in the morning
Made the bed, gathered up her clothes to leave
Saw the concierge curled on the settee
Said, "What you did for me was hard for me to believe."

"I was just doing what was right.
No one that knows love could leave you out there on such a night.
If you can help someone, 
Bare this in mind 
And consider it an indiscriminate act of kindness."

Consider it an indiscriminate act of kindness.

Poetry Day!

Unthinkably good music right here:

Friday was Montana Poetry Day here in NZ, and in its honour, let me wax a little lyrical about poetry itself.  I never really caught the poetry bug until after I left school, when I started haunting book stores and flicking through their poetry sections.  I found a poetry book by Jewel (the singer) and her voice really captured my attention.  Here was poetry that didn't need translation, it spoke my language.  My own writing started to take off to, when I left behind the irritations of structure and rhyme and instead focussed on writing straight from my experiance, trying to write the truth.  

My poetry tastes have matured since then, and the last few years I have become totally enamored with New Zealand poetry, particularly poetry about the New Zealand landscape.

I don't for sure know why I love poetry so much, what it is about poetry that so captures my attention, but I find it so perfect and so truthful.  I am a very sensory person, and I think poetry is a artform that brings together sensory information.  I love to hear people's voices, and poetry has a capacity to allow a person's voice to speak in a way that is at once personal and public.

On Friday I went along to hear some poets read their own work and a favourite of someone elses.  If I had been asked, here is the poem I would have read of my own:

Listen:  here

An Ode to the Botanic Gardens

That time of the year again, the ever-greens are ever green as ever

but those insufferable deciduous models,

are pulling on their showy coats, all reds and yellows,

All, "look at me!  I'm on fire! I glow like incadence! I light up the world with my impossibly beautiful leaves, each impossibly unique!

Look at me!  Slowly, letting it fall, slowly showing you my 

shapely,

dark,

strong 

body,

my arms slow dancing, my discarded garments scrambling for cover on

an Autumn wind"

The favourite poem I would have chosen to share, much harder to choose, but I think I'd go with this one, a recent favourite, combining my love of NZ poetry with my love for the Peninsula:

Listen (to me read it, she's dead!): here

The Long Harbour

There are three valleys where the warm sun lingers, 
gathered to a green hill girt-about anchorage, 
and gently, gently, at the cobbled margin 
of fire-formed, time-smoothed, ocean-moulded curvature, 
a spent tide fingers the graven boulders, 
the black, sea-bevelled stones.

The fugitive hours, in those sun-loved valleys, 
Implacable hours, their golden-wheeled chariots’ 
inaudible passage check, and slacken 
their restless teams’ perpetual galloping; 
and browsing, peaceable sheep and cattle 
gaze as they pause by the way.

Grass springs sweet where once thick forest 
gripped vales by fire and axe freed to pasturage; 
but flame and blade have spared the folding gullies, 
and there, still, the shade-flitting, honey-sipping lutanists 
copy the dropping of tree-cool waters 
dripping from stone to stone.

White hawthorn hedge from old, remembered England, 
and orchard white, and whiter bridal clematis 
the bush-bequeathed, conspire to strew the valleys 
in tender spring, and blackbird, happy colonist, 
and blacker, sweeter-fluted tui echo 
either the other’s song.

From far, palm-feathery, ocean-spattered islands 
there rowed hither dark and daring voyagers; 
and Norseman, Gaul, the Briton and the German 
sailed hither singing; all these hardy venturers 
they desired a home, and have taken their rest there, 
and their songs are lost on the wind.

I have walked here with my love in the early spring-time, 
and under the summer-dark walnut-avenues, 
and played with the children, and waited with the aged 
by the quayside, and listened alone where manukas 
sighing, windswept, and sea-answering pine-groves 
garrison the burial-ground.

It should be very easy to lie down and sleep there 
in that sequestered hillside ossuary, 
underneath a billowy, sun-caressed grass-knoll, 
beside those dauntless, tempest-braving ancestresses 
who pillowed there so gladly, gnarled hands folded, 
their tired, afore-translated bones.

It would not be a hard thing to wake up one morning 
to the sound of bird-song in scarce-stirring willow-trees, 
waves lapping, oars plashing, chains running slowly, 
and faint voices calling across the harbour; 
to embark at dawn, following the old forefathers, 
to put forth at daybreak for some lovelier, 
still undiscovered shore.

Why do I love this poem so?  It's fabulous....

PS: forgive me, I can't pronounce "ossuary"

Wool Heaven

I am in wool heaven, bought the fabulous wool for my sisters hat - I'm banking on her not checking my blog while she's down in the deep south being shaken to bits by rampant earthwakes.  Oooh what a hard-core island we live on!

                                

Anyway, she LOVES red so I am making her a red hat and I've got some cool blue wool in my stash so I'm going to knit/crochet an embellisment to go on the hat.  Fun!  Should have it done by the end of the weekend, all going to plan.

I always buy my wool in the Warehouse, but I went to proper knitting shops today while The Sumo had her medical procedure.  HEAVEN.  But expensive.  

Freckles

                            

I have them.  I am a sucker for freckles, heck, even my own!

I have only three projects in the offing currently.  A neck warmer for me mum, nearish completion.  A vest/cardigan for myself, nearish to beginning (i.e. I have a pattern) and a new hat for me sister.  I'm going to make the same one as I made myself because I'm totally loving the pattern. Here it is in the day-light:

     

I think it will be blue but I have today off because the Sumo has some sort of medical procedure and needs a 'caregiver', i.e. taxi driver and putter-to-bed-to-sleep-off-the-drugs-er, SO I shall visit the glorious knitting shop to find some wool worthy of my precious sister.

Mum's neck warmer is going well I believe, I'm very happy with how it looks and it's been fun knitting using my aunty's old old needles.   It's fun knitting for people I love!

I had a friend over the other night and The Sumo pulled out all the headbands and hats I'd knitted just to show them off.  I felt so loved and valued!  Nice feeling.

Last three months have been absolutely terrible for me, very dark with despair.  But, I think that things are getting better and I'm am allowing a little very precious hope to seep back in.  Not to be all dramatic or anything, but I barely survived and so it's really good to be 'unfreezing my heart' again.  Hope to be writing poetry again momentarily, so will post some over here when I do.

Latest Hat

My latest hat, I made it for myself!

Learning to love:

Op-Shopping

Went op-shopping today, wearing the proceeds:

Blue top = $15, cute brooch = $5.  Score!

Tugboats and Diggers

I work in a magical place called Lyttelton. It's a port town just over the hill from where I live. My window overlooks the port and, specifically, the quay where the ships come to be loaded up with logs. It's magic! I love watching the ships come in, with the tugs nudging them safely into place. I love watching the cranes loading the logs (ever so slowly) onto the ship. I love watching the little yellow trucks perched on the logs, on the ship, organising the logs neatly into place.

It's the best view a girl could ask for.

Today was exciting because usually the log ships are already in when I arrive, they must come in first thing, but today one came in at 10:00! So I got to watch it!

Now I am looking out my window at the loading going on, it's a good distraction on what is otherwise a rubbish day work wise.