My Vagabond Year: Day 21

My Vagabond Year: Day 20

My Vagabond Year: Day 19

Tiny Ekatahuna boasts a giant white kiwi statue and a radio station that broadcasts from a second hand shop.

My Vagabond Year: Day 18

 

Whatever they're called

"Fries" or "chips"

These salty fingers of potato

Beckon seductively even from the shabbiest takeout

My Vagabond Year: 17

Why would a cow
Keep jumping the fence
And alone
To graze where the grass is shorter?

My Vagabond Year: Day 16

Ragwort
Noxious weed in New Zealand
National flower of Isle of Man
Magical fairy transport to Ireland

My Vagabond Year: Day 15

 

The umbrella leaks

Yet I go out

The water's all squish and slap

I listen

My Vagabond Year: Day 14

The foxglove blooms
Race up the stalk
Unwilling as Cinderella
To leave the party

My Vagabond Year: Day 13

Poppy's a heading dog
To lead the sheep
While others bark from behind

Another Auden

Another Auden poem that speaks directly to me, reflecting the bonfire gathering last night. His work does what art should do, capturing a evanescent moment and allowing it to reflect and resonate in the psychic space of others until it becomes both vast and personal for each.

Answering Auden

Both the lift I got from reading Halfway There by WH Auden yesterday and the sadness I feel at the death of my friend Lawrence went with my on my walk today.  A poem came to me somewhere along the lane.

Answering Auden

It's not that I didn't have questions,
Only that asking might get answers
Answers that would give me pause;
What a Kelpie looks like
Or Mr Wren's marital status
Could stop me from going out the door
And always away
Driven by crowded feelings
Into the calm of an alien landscape
The distant surf f cars on a road
Out of sight

If I'd known that would be our last conversation
I'd have said more than 'Goodbye.'

My Vagabond Year: Day 12

An evening campfire
The Milky Way
An unexpected death
I read Auden

An Auden Poem

I read this and felt he was talking directly to me.

My Vagabond Year: Day 11

Chocolate
Should be said like an incantation
Abracadabra
Fiat Lux

My Vagabond Year: Day 10

 

Let the wind drink the water

Carry it to you

My Vagabond Year: Day 9

Designing number stamps
Does zero come last
Or first?

The Unfamiliar Street

Looking out from a Wellington cafe

When I travel, one of my greatest pleasures is the aimless amble through unfamiliar streets. I keep trying to figure out why it has to be unfamiliar, why walking in my own neighborhood in Los Angeles does not give me the same lift. There is something to the soul-lifting experience of being untethered from everyday life. I feel like a balloon floating free on the wind when I step out of my day-to-day life and haunts and just go.

My Vagabond Year: Day 8

 

Wellington
Expected percussion
Instead got melody
Bright harmony

My Vagabond Year: Day 7

Galoshes at the back door – rainfall certain

My Vagabond Year: Day 6

Carving in wood with improvised tools

My Vagabond Year: Day 5

Full moon over the valley

My Vagabond Year: Day 4

Gooseberries have nasty thorns

My Vagabond Year: Day 3

A rose welcomes

My Vagabond Year: Day 2

Pacific Studios

My Vagabond Year: Day 1

Launched!