ADCOCK, Fleur

Weathering

Literally thin-skinned, I suppose, my face

catches the wind off the snow-line and flushes

with a flush that will never wholly settle. Well:

that was a metropolitan vanity,

wanting to look young for ever, to pass.

I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty,

nor anything but pretty enough to satisfy

men who need to be seen with passable women.

But now that I am in love with a place

which doesn't care how I look, or if I'm happy,

happy is how I look, and that's all.

My hair will turn grey in any case,

my nails chip and flake, my waist thicken,

and the years work all their usual changes.

If my face is to be weather-beaten as well

that's little enough lost, a fair bargain

for a year among lakes and fells, when simply

to look out of my window at the high pass

makes me indifferent to mirrors and to what

my soul may wear over its new complexion.


Stewart Island

‘But look at all this beauty’

said the hotel manager’s wife

when asked how she could bear to

live there. True: there was a fine bay,

all hills and atmosphere; white

sand, and bush down to the sea’s edge;

oyster-boats, too, and Maori

fishermen with Scottish names (she

ran off with one that autumn).

As for me, I walked on the beach;

it was too cold to swim. My

seven-year-old collected shells

and was bitten by sandflies;

my four-year-old paddled, until

a mad seagull jetted down

to jab its claws and beak into

his head. I had already

decided to leave the country.


For a Five-Year-Old

A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
your closest relatives, and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
and we are kind to snails.