she takes the blood pressure
of the forest/ and hears
her mother breathe the hug-me-tight
stitches/ of kauri and macrocarpa/
her mother so tongue-tied/
she could coax ships into the harbour/
and the southerly straight out of it/
her mother once famous for the tricks
of her breath/ could play a sheet
of corrugated iron like bagpipes/
and make her carving knife sigh/
these forest nights/ her mother
breathes for all of us
Kerrin P. Sharpe
Kerrin P. Sharpe lives in Christchurch, New Zealand where she is a poet and a teacher of creative writing. She has published in NZ, Australia and England. Her first collection, Three Days in a Wishing Well, has just been published by Victoria University Press.
Some of the poems published in the Anthology previously appeared in Best New Zealand Poems, Takahe, Turbine and Sport and she has a forthcoming poetry selection in Oxford Poets 2013.
Kerrin P. Sharpe's website »