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A woman who thought she had reason to think • You have come in out of the shadow. • The room is full of conversations. • They are like eyes • They are out here only • They are going naked as day • Goodbye in good time to the body
Source: Bodily Presence: Words, Paintings, by W.H. Oliver and Anne Munz. Wellington: BlackBerry Press, 1993
Electronic source: Bodily Presence: a TEI-conformant transcription
All poems © W. H. Oliver
A woman who thought she had reason to think
I was too much taken with sex looked at me hard
and back at the picture. I had to admit,
no words spoken either, that the vast trunks
looked a little like bodies entwined.
A good deal more than a little.
That's one approach.
At the first viewing
it prompted a bit of theology,
was it, perhaps, about the trinity?
Another ex-catholic and I
looked very knowing.
It could hardly be that.
Maybe the crucifixion?
That's another.
Anne
said: macrocarpas
are very mysterious trees.
Perhaps
it's about heaven and earth,
Rangi and Papa? The branches
spread out close to the ground
immense and crepuscular, sheltering
all you would like to keep safe
for some delicate chosen communion.
They do not end at the frame, they grow
out over your walls, they enfold
the space you take up, lying and loving
maybe alone, maybe with this one or the other.
In their arms the blue sky is entrapped.
When I was a child
almost all of the things that mattered
went on beneath willows by rivers
or more secretly under macrocarpa hedges
– the furtive cigarette, taking off clothes
to go swimming, the first attempts
to celebrate the body, coming together
held and hidden by the sheltering arms.
Now you can almost
believe you had never left
and hope to get back.
Roots of Heaven V