Inventory of a Walk
 
On Kinley’s Lane, quince tree, wild blackberries, branches of feijoa reaching over a fence, fallen fruit. Into Abberley Park, past the bird bath with salamanders twisting round the base, down a gravel path. Hellebores, rhodos, magnolia stellata. Early morning walkers with their dogs. The couple who each day, scatter birdseed at the foot of an old oak. Where’s the butterfly tree? she asks and I point. Skyful of monarchs, dancing one minute, settling the next.

but see –
still
the morning shimmers

An asphalt path lined with yellow pollen. The tree trunk where my children once stood, sang I’m the king of the castle, you’re the dirty rascal, then jumped. On the northern lawn a dog barks at the foot of a holly tree. Rats, the owner tells me, and I look up, see them jumping from branch to branch. The council ought to do something, he says. Small stream, so low this morning, muddy-sided. A dog leaps in, sudden scatter of ducks, his bedraggled coat. I pull mine tightly, turn, walk away.

Marjory Woodfield is from New Zealand. She’s been widely published in journals including Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems, Spelt, Orbis… She won the New Zealand Robert Burns Poetry Prize, The New Zealand Society of Authors Heritage Poetry Prize, and was second in the inaugural Patricia Eschen Prize for Poetry.