Author: Maggie Rainey-Smith

When life gives you grandchildren

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When life gives you grandchildren
(while watching Life gives you 
Tangerines)

Watching Netflix, Korean drama about
Hanyeo, Jeju, places I know as a tourist
Volcanic rock, women divers, motherhood

I’m drinking a Pinot Gris in spite of believing
I have pancreatic pains because I am
creative and overwrought and loving

Umma, Mum, Mama, Mom, even Mummy
And I might cry even without the wine
Who needs subtitles to comprehend

Last night, I pat-patted goodnight to my
darling mokopuna, Sonja, 손자 granddaughter
her hands grasping both mine tight

locked in, waiting for a change in her
breathing, the gentle sound of a snore
or the pip pip of sleeping bliss

before

I untangle both hands, with the stealth
of a haneyo, halmoni, or Kiwi grandmother
and slip from the bed like a happy thief

to be woken by the hot breath and thick
hair of love in pink pyjamas clasping
my hands again, a reclaiming

so tonight, in spite of old age signs
of possible problems, I abandon
caution, ignore health warnings

watch Korean Netflix and celebrate
motherhood, miss my own mum 
and revel in being a halmoni

if this is old age, then, here I am


A view of the world

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A view of the world

Elton John’s yellow brick road races across towards our house from Matiu Soames
Mid Winter, the sun dropping in its usual show-offy way, exploding grey clouds
I’m chopping a red onion that ought to be a shallot but I forgot and it will do
the dill is waiting with the cream, the capers, the chopped garlic, zest of lemon

Tomorrow an eye surgeon will scoop out my old useful lens from my right eye
someone described it as akin to a designer scoop for a delicate entrée of
well, who knows, something that small, a small scoop and out comes my lens
my faithful view from my right eye of the world, my perspective, a wee bit cloudy

I’m having a wee slosh of wine as the recipe demands a deglaze and I only have
my favourite Pinot Gris with which to do this, so of course, I’m going to taste it too
in the meantime a friend just emailed to say they had their cataract done yesterday
And it was … challenging and everyone else had assured her it was a doddle

She emails back almost immediately to say she didn’t mean to scare me and that
her eyesight is better already but you know she just wanted to be honest and her advice 

        You just lie back and let it happen as with so many things in life

I’ve warned the surgeon I sometimes get vertigo but now I’m practising lying flat

I will lie back as my friend suggests and think of England as the saying goes
But there’s so much else to think of, eyesight aside, right now its Gaza and Tehran
And I live at the bottom of the world where I can have a new plastic lens for my
new view of the world safe inside a sheltered harbour nowhere near war


The Sisterhood

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Brooke Van Velden has a way with the flick of her hair
a nonchalant movement that says to us all, she just doesn’t care

Not a wit or a worry about changing the Bill that will 
stop fair payment claims for our sisterhood, how dare she

but you see she’s in thrall to David the Atlas guy, he of
the Treaty Bill if you will, and the school lunch revamping

an 8 % vote but don’t worry, he’s stamping all over the PM
our hapless, and hatless, and utterly witless blue suited man

who always gets tongue-tied while trotting out slogans
wherever he can things like What I’ll say to you – yet he

hasn’t clue he’s the fmcg guy, aisle ends all the way
most of the time on a plane, and flying away from us

while Winnie takes charge blaming all things too woke
crying get back to basics where a bloke is a bloke

and a sheila knows better than Winnie for sure
when it comes to the pay check the bloke he gets more

how else could he cop up for all those blue suits
shiny shoes and fine dining, our Winnie’s a winner

Brooke Van Velden is simply a total beginner
She’s sold out the sisterhood but not on her own

shoulder to shoulder the girls they lined up
Erica, Nicola, Judith, Louise, a new breed of women

all eager to please David Seymour  … ?

Bring back Marilyn Waring a girl with some guts
or some guys from the back bench could throw us

a crutch, it’s not as if equal pay is asking too much

The ballot box girls is our only solution, get started
campaigning, there’s no absolution 

for girls with the hair they flick in defiance, pants suits
they button with casual compliance, it’s time for

a change, we need hearts in the mix

Gird your loins girls of all sorts and all chromosomes
the whole bloody alphabet and all antinomes

Let’s show them what we think in 2026





High Wire by Michael Fitzsimons

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High Wire

I went to the launch at the Seatoun Bowling Club. You just gotta love the venues poets choose to launch their books. Mine was launched from the bedroom of the bookseller during lockdown. And more recently, Simon Sweetman’s The Richard Poems were launched in a trendy men’s clothing store/barber shop.

I first met Michael when we were reading poems together in Kapiti at a Retirement Village and indeed we also read to one of our most receptive audiences in the dementia ward of that village. An unforgettable and unexpectedly heart-warming experience for all the poets involved.

Early on in this lovely collection, Michael writes:

My poems seem to appeal
To people who don’t read poetry.


He got me, right there and then. I feel such a connection to these words about my own poetry. I’ve been picking his book up every day to read at random and each poem brings joy. There’s a theme of gratitude throughout. The poems speak of the ordinary with such love and affection and too, the profound. His love of family is palpable and joyful. He speaks lightly of a brush with death (more than a brush, a serious cancer diagnosis which he has written about in an earlier collection) but he manages to be uplifting and grateful in all his observations.

There’s delightful humour and I just love this poem/anecdote – yes, Michael pops poetic anecdotes into this collection, stylishly and inspiring.

A friend buys bulk chicken on special from PAK’Nsave.
He divides the chicken into meal-size portions and freezes them. You have no idea, he says. A few bucks a meal.

He and his wife live on the pension. They eat enough chicken to fly business class to Europe every three years.

Another poem that leapt out at me and I just love, is about his daughter coming home to watch the All Blacks snatch a 16-15 victory in Dunedin … the poem talks of Razor Robertson’s first test …

Surprisingly for an All Black
Coach, he’s a talker

This made me laugh out loud as I said almost exactly that when I listened to Razor’s after match chat.

Then there’s the very beautiful love poem The Fin with dolphins and orcas but at the very heart is love, romantic, domestic and true.

Another that spoke to me On the white carpet – musings about moving into a house with white carpet and spilling coffee. Memories for me of white shagpile carpet in an apartment in Auckland in the late 70’s. Play us a tune Maureen an evocative family poem reeking of all things Irish, family, history and heritage. A gorgeous glimpse into the author’s roots.


There’s so much to love in this collection. It is uplifting and for a poet, it is inspiring. I rushed to write my own poem about an encounter I had at our local Pavilion Café, after reading Michael’s delightful encounter at his local 4Square Four Square Philosophy.


The final poem in this collection Credo is one of my favourites. It’s a perfectly placed poem to end such a loving collection. It feels like a questioning of faith and yet a deeply embedded faith too. The final lines …

So when you step out the front door
by the olive tree,
you have something to take with you,

something sustaining,
like a cut lunch.

How Good is This? … (the title of another poem).

The legend of Jenny Blair

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There's a chain link fence
that marks her grave
Only 21 when she died

He proposed they said
when she lost her leg
perhaps on bended knee

I was young and filled with awe
that love could be so grand
now the bar was set for me

Romance lit large by a chain
link fence at the local cemetery
that he had asked for her hand

I still get a shiver of something
whenever I pass her grave
on the left before the tree

when I go to visit my family
graves, that chain link fence
still speaks to me

of a time when thoughts
romantically were forming
he set the bar quite high

I was almost ready to lose
a leg but not quite ready to
die for love, but a ring, oh

Oh a ring as a thing
back then for sure
embodied perfect love

the tombstone has an
angel etched, the white
chain fence protects

her grave, romantic love
enclosed and we never forget
that he proposed

Laughing with pigs

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Laughing with pigs

It’s 1973 and I’m breathless with
life hitching a lift in Norway
it’s dusk going on evening and
a truck stops to pick me up

we chat with my newly learned Norsk
a real conversation, I’m feeling fluent
the truck driver is happy to chat
a friendly bloke with no English

I ask him what he’s carrying in the back
of his truck but he has no words so
he pulls over, stops the truck and
we get out to look at his pigs

I’m riding in a truck that is loaded with
pigs… pigs, I say, pigs and he says griser
back and forth, pigs, griser, pigs 
he slaps his thigh with one hand laughing

back and forth, pigs, griser, pigs, griser
all the way back to my hotel where I work
loving this shared hilarity of new words
feeling fluent, pigs, pigs are griser

He drops me off, and we wave goodbye
like old friends and it’s barely a week later 
one evening in the bar when I learn that 
pigs with a Kiwi accent sounds like

a Norsk word for male genitalia
my affection for the truck driver
is renewed… no sly slant, just
genuine laughter and a lift home

If this was Netflix, I’d be dead by now

Drool

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(Wordle word of the morning)






Double o vowels, a long, interesting sound





with the consonant ‘l’ as a flourishing finish





to drool is to savour perhaps, to desire















babies drool and we wipe their cute chins





an old man drools, and we see his decline





like spit when a friend spoke during Covid















sunlight lit their spit as it flew towards





you, sparkling, dangerous alive yet deathly





so that we dodged even while fascinated















that this flying drool existed, so vivid





illuminated, lively and terrifying hitherto





unnoticed and now possibly fatal















A poet should drool perhaps on each chosen





word, or wish to inspire a drool from a reader





the long double o sound with an l to land it















let’s drool

			

	
		
	


			
				


	

		
Me and the Sea

		
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(Winter Swimming)










So you lovely ocean at my doorstep
a bathtub almost full then half full
tepid, warm and freezing

my blood pressure rises and falls
at whim sending my head spinning
and a cold shower is but a bitter
consolation

I want to swim in you my dear friend
the sea
I check my land, air, water app for the
key
If it's red, I must not swim E.coli lurks
in the wake of a storm
But orange is just a warning, like don't
swallow the sea just swim in me 
and I do

I wallow, kick, swim, lie back and adore
stand, watch through waves, admire 
the sea floor, random starfish, seaweed
I adorn myself with kelp bulbs, imagine
sharks but briefly, watch the sun rise
above the pines

watch the ferry leave, see latecomers
running, coats on
unaware I'm there, neck deep or floating
sometimes kicking vigorously
dodging waves if it's an orange day my
mouth closed
or practising my newly learned freestyle
face down

At age 5 I would shiver out of the water
standing in hot sand, teeth chattering
covered in goosebumps, towel around
my shoulders, licking an ice-cream
then giddy and sick on the sea-saw

At 73, emboldened by you, my darling sea
fearlessly entering you, unfazed by your
freezing arms, blood rushing to greet you

all my goosebumps gone






			

	
		
	


			
				


	

		
TIME and Tobacco

		
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It was the 70’s sort of mid-way or thereabouts
Auckland coming of age, Antoines & Clichy
Ad Agency reps being wooed all over town
wine for a full-colour triple-page spread

Rick was his name, a groovy photographer
fresh from the Outback, his camera slung
carelessly across his neck, the strap festooned
with luggage labels like a Pacifika lei 

He wore these labels like a pro and I guess he was
they flew him to Huka Lodge with some journos
put him up where Zane Grey once slept some
rustic extravagance (I did the expenses)

The journos caught trout at Lake Taupo
doing the sums, it seemed viable they’d
paid a scuba diver to watch out for them
feeding their fishing lines for the story

It was a great story, Muldoon and some sheep
on the front cover of the South Pacific issue
 and some incorrect stats about Maori infant
mortality – hey, they only had three days and

hey they sold a triple-page full-colour spread
to the likes of Philip Morris – it’s a while ago now
I can’t be sure but mostly back then it was
tobacco companies funding TIME MAGAZINE






souls sold over flash white tablecloths
mostly men in suits possibly French wines
we girls in the back office doing the sums
typing up the invitations making reservations

Time has moved on and now we have Casey
bringing back the good old days 
(a ciggie with your lunch anyone …)

			

	
		
	


			
				


	

		
Road Cones

		
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Orange road cones appear to incite brain fog
community Facebook pages bedecked with outrage
traffic disrupted, slowed, held up, drivers fume
and the sea lap laps at the road edge unaware

and the sea laps, the sun shines, the birds sing

all over the motu, angry motorists decry cycle lanes
fury spills over orange road cones onto Facebook
people calculate the lost seconds, minutes even
imagine hours of their happy lives destroyed

and the sea laps, the wind blows, the birds fly

sometimes traffic lights accompany the road cones
those infuriating orange road cones (don’t you wish
you had shares in the company who makes them)
people idle away in cars waiting, waiting, fuming

and the sea lap-laps, the sun shines, clouds scuttle

late model tinted window turbo charged saloons
rev their engines impatiently owners sweat on
leather seats, cursing, checking Apple watches
fearing the lost seconds, minutes possibly hours

and the sea splashes, the birds cry, clouds fly


European sports cars, boat trailers, camper
vans, double cab utilities even caravans
big diesel buses and electric build your dreams
ageing Tesla, Jaguars with branded spotlights

everyone is in their car, or so it seems

and the sea lap laps and the birds sing

and then one day all the road cones float
away and the sea swallows them all