Reference Points
Stranger within • Generation gap • Midwinter spring • Silent revolution • Trees, travelling • Under the wave • Magnolia • Augury • Four elements • Peacocks • Old house • Rainbird • Apocalypse
Histories
Historian • Portraits • The janitor • Ancestors • Yesterday's loss • Counter-revolution • Prayer of an elder • Robert Lowell • Social control • Waitomo • Parihaka • Rongopai
Myths and Emblems
Counter talk • The empty chair • The candle • Wave and shell • Increase and multiply • November 1978 • Rumpelstiltskin • Thumbelina • The swineherd • A Japanese tale • Solstice
Source: Out of Season: Poems. Wellington; New York: Oxford University Press, 1980
Electronic source: Out of Season: a TEI-conformant transcription
All poems © W. H. Oliver
Under the wave
Swimmer under the breaking wave of time
will you speed to warm shallows or beaten
to the sharp sea floor roll out with the rip
well beyond waving on your last journey?
These are the chances you take,
as wave after wave falls and you dive
perilously through lives to an end you fear
now or at the next chance taken. Swimmer,
venturing out of your age, treading the years,
no longer willing to walk the sand and gather
shells, glass and driftwood, relics smoothed of stress,
you take the chance. Hope as you will for the shallows
but do not place bets. They may gather a broken
body set down by the next high tide on the sand.