Songs from the Sea

Yesterday, New Zealand marked two minutes silence for the 29 men who died in the Pike River mine explosion, at the commencement of a memorial service on the West Coast.

Songs from the Sea was written in memory of Rod Thornton, who also lived on the West Coast and died, aged 27, in a fall while mountain climbing. Given yesterday's sense of loss and elegy, and the strength of the West Coast environment in the poem, it felt like the "right" post for today.

Songs from the Sea

Songs from the sea sighing

in beneath the spindrift to the land's

curve, lying long beneath green bush

where the nikau palms stand sentinel

all along that shining margin

between sea and land, where the wind

goes walking through the wild grasses

and sea birds glide, sailing the currents

of the air above shifting saltwater

tides, plaintive, melancholy, crying

to the wide and empty skies.

All their songs are sung for you,

sough of the wind and sigh of the sea

are your lullaby and your requiem

where you now lie, in the green earth

of this country you loved so well

that in your passion to embrace it

you leapt too high, like Icarus flying

into the heart of fire, into the sun –

and so fell, back into emptiness

beneath the sky, where quiet now

in earth you lie.

(c) Helen Lowe

Published in Yellow Moon 17 (Australia) 2005.