Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry

Affection, like ice grows around an object
or metamorphoses away
until no evidence it ever existed.
Thought never did –
think about the workload and tedium of
mustering 500 first year students
kids straight from school used to being told when,
where and how.
He did …
printed course outlines, organised tutorial groups,
oversaw terms tests and assignments and
delivered two blocks of lectures –
about 30% of academic load.

Plus
answered dozens of questions and was point of contact
always helpful, always cheerful, never sigh or scowl or
“ now I’ve really heard everything.”
At the last class of the year
he handed out feedback survey sheets,
telling us
“ write whatever you want,
but don’t bother writing Jennings is useless –
they already know that.”

We told him before we got in we smelled –
stink was the descriptor used
he said: “ would you prefer to walk?”
Put it that way, no.
10 days hiking in the south-west of the country
now hitchhiking the 10 miles to civilisation –
 transport home, a comfortable bed, a hot shower.
10 minutes by car, three hours by foot –
no choice, no-brainer.

1980’s Ford , driven with one arm out the window and
one hand on the steering wheel, a fag in the other
his sentences were carried on a ribbon of nicotine
smoke-free: did we want to walk?
He will drop us in the town,
the town where he lived,
the place where the first settlers had first settled
despite government plans to move it –
had even built a new town for the population to move to –
he hadn’t, most hadn’t.
He reckoned most townsfolk were like him,
in fact come to think about, like most New Zealanders,
he said, “ I pay no attention to a nudge,
I don’t mind a push,
but I bloody well won’t be shoved. ”

 For while in the 1970’s, television was liberal
difficult to imagine that the flagrance of cyberspace
that
impotence, unfaithfulness, homosexuality
were once designated contentious, controversial
and shocking
but they were.
An afternoon weekday panel show
agony aunt-ed them in public along with the mundane anxieties
of in-laws, teenagers, finances and neighbours
discussions were lively, often witty,
the ratings fantastic –
many pretended not to watch while,
trying to find an excuse to watch.

The host was plump and complacent, literally and figuratively
genial –
except obvious dis -chemistry with one panel member
eventually, two lines must intersect
a quiet afternoon, nothing controversial until
the submitter has been reading Cosmopolitan and of a new type of orgasm –
the descriptor cannot yet be said out loud.
The host with a grin to make Jack Nicholson proud
turns to the least favoured
and asks if she would like to answer
“ good God,” she proffered
“ in this day and age do people still have orgasms.”