Sometime suburban strolling

For a bit of suburban nostalgia.

I love taking a stroll through the suburbs sometimes. As much as I love living right in the centre of Wellington, sometimes I feel like you only see people about their 9-5 lives. Empty souls inside shells of tailored suit jackets, trading social niceties while being battered about by the cold wind and unrelenting force of the liberal market.


I exaggerate. My poetic license is out of hand, yet again.


But in all seriousness, central city life can sometimes be a little too austere. What you rarely see are families, or people going about the very real, very everyday parts of their lives. Getting out into the suburbs (especially on a sunny day) shows you a New Zealand you will not often find on Courtenay Place. People smile at one another, or gossip over their garden fences. The elderly potter about the streets with walking sticks and family cats leap at neighbourhood fantails. There are markets, op-shops, and dodgy old pubs- all of which contribute to this wonderful sense of multi-cultural community. And Newtown, this quirky little suburb is quite possibly the most interesting of them all.

Catching Lives.

This is Foreign Land.

See our city reflected in the harbour.

Skyscrapers, church spires, and city lives,

distorted by velvet folds of rippling water.

Wellington is an island,
connected to the rest of this land by sea.

We speak different words here,

all a new language.

By custom and by fashion,

this is all but foreign land.

Drink we not water,

but sustenance derives from small coffee cups.

A world of liquid black gold

embracing cappuccino harbour.

Dress we against wind,

and it undresses us.

Upturned umbrellas

and snatched-at skirts,

blowing hard against the solace of souls.

Down Ngaio Gorge,

round motorway corner 

and grand harbour opening-

This is Wellington now.

But evening star rises,

Shines bright over silhouette hills-

They see it too.

In Cape Reinga, Bluff,

all here below a southern cross.

On sunshine days

                          we drop airs, don jandals,

dive waves, light barbies-

perhaps like Kiwis after all.

Through love affairs

with Artisan beer,

and long black lunches,

at our truest we know

                                                          It's sunshine on ocean that's liquid gold after all.

Oriental Sunset

If you must do readings, if you absolutely must, take them into the sunshine and sit on the roof of a boat shed, take a break to go for a run, and return to watch the sunset on Oriental Parade.

Salty snaps.

-Got a little carried away with the birthday present of my dreams. Turns out my inability to be concise in writing also translates to photography.

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