The inlet lies almost calm
under a sky with soft paintings of cloud
The kānuka trees are oscillating their upstretched
dark-green tips lightly with the tiny breeze
Two or three chainsaws are garring open
the air filling the hillside with dark bad blood
When they stop I breathe and hear
traffic and the rhythmic clanking and roaring
of the machines installing the boardwalk down below
and the peeps and trills of birds oblivious to?
ignoring? blocking? the meconium-coloured stench
of far too much industrial sound
I’m trying to work as a poet
I can’t be oblivious to can’t ignore but
I can block I fire up my Bluetooth speaker
with an ambient-metal wall of sound the only
music that covers everything: chainsaws
traffic piledrivers breeze cloud birds
First published in Turbine | Kapohau 2025 (December)
