The traffic flows past our picnic spot
in waves, crashing over us in the same rhythm
as the tides of the ocean.
Large campervans, stock trucks, cars with boat trailers,
all seem to have the same gravity as
the burgeoning moon,
collecting a long line of vehicular planets behind them,
their collective orbit
snaking along the windy põhutukawa-lined perimeter
of the Coromandel coast,
for kilometers
and kilometers...
Their patient celestial dance
interrupted by small-town adolescents
with a big-time exhaust, or
a born-again boomer
made agile by his motorbike,
thrust into the wild future
with the spontaneity of middle age...
We sleep with our heads
pressed against either
the ocean, or the traffic -- they
both sound the same, but
what matters is
knowing -- a feeling,
a search for
present-nostalgia,
the thin veil of reality made
tangible
by daylight
glimpse.
The sun goes down
at eight one night, six the next,
and I'm sure
the slow summer sadly descends with it...
the traffic all goes back to Auckland,
that sprawling volcanic hot-house
where one third of our tiny population
insist on clambering over one another...
We go back to planning:
our next free meal, retrieved from the bins of Countdown;
our next work of art;
our great escape
to the summer
of another hemisphere.
