My great honour to be included in the Pukapuka Talks 2022.

I may have posted this poem on my blog before, back in 2019 when I wrote it... but I can't recall... like a lot of disorganised writers, I have poems and stories hidden all over the show on my laptop... undiscoverable to even me... and then sometimes they pop up and say... hey, this one's okay, why don't you read me again.  Too, having returned recently from another wonderful time in Seoul with family, to the cooler clime here of Welly and these past few days, endless rain... this morning, the sun is out and I can see every 'glinting thing'.... 

I walk my granddaughter
up the hill to Daycare
over grates, cigarette butts
past plastic trash bags

she finds the asphalt
mesmerising, examines
every glinting thing
with perfect purpose

We wave to the lady with
the dog wearing boots
on all four paws and she
stops and waves back

people respond to a one
year old who cares that much
about them and they break
into wide happy smiles

Later on, I board the bus and
become angry at the teenager
head down on his phone
in the seat for the elderly


I shame this young man
when someone even older
than I am, boards, but all
I do is shame myself

the old woman doesn’t 
want this young man’s seat
she’d rather stand than
lose her dignity to rage

At the pedestrian crossing
I am the only one fuming
as a man in a white sedan
edges over the painted lines

I swear at him, actually
out loud but no one hears
or cares least of all him
as he roars to the next lights

As a visitor in this city 
I am the elderly anomaly
carrying the luggage of
my own petty prejudice

I’m learning to contain my
expectations of others, to
tilt my parasol to the sun
ride the bus like a local
an eye out for the glinting