Sam Hunt
Lines for a New Year
I like the branch
I find myself on
a view over the garden
all the way down to the beach
the family below me
gathered in the garden
debating where I’ve gone.
My father’s got a theory.
I like the branch
I find myself on.
*
You know how it is
to give up the piss
a week to the
day before Christmas
you know how it is
to fall over sober
safe in some spot,
come to later
remembering the lot.
*
the rugby ball kicked
far as the far paddock
where an apple tree caught it.
Was agreed among folk
they’d never seen such a catch,
such a kick, such a match.
*
I gave it away lately
I had no choice,
no need pump the brakes—
they’d already seized.
I like your poison, lady,
I like it too much:
which is why I am
where I am today
outside of thought, beyond your touch.
I said I’ll be seeing you.
You knew what I meant,
at least you seemed to.
Was the message you got
the same one I sent?
*
It’s a love song
between a mother and son.
The son plays the drums
and wrote the song.
On the recording
mother sings the song
like mothers do. And the
son plays the drums
like a good boy. It′s a
love song.
*
A friend used to say
my dog and I
had the same way of walking,
especially walking away.
Which was
often the case.
These days there’s
not much happening.
It’s people walking toward me
asking, where’s the dog,
the dog? And they’re
right. Where is he?
*
You live in this world
you have no choice.
Silence would be fine.
But you give it voice—
you have to, you cannot
help yourself.
Your mother says you never knew
when enough was enough.
*
Dreamt I met Thomas Hardy
walking a local back road.
He was an old man
but coped okay with his cane.
He said he was looking for
a woman called Lizbie Brown.
I said I knew her name—
but only from his poem.
*
Sitting on a clifftop
was always a dream
that more or less came true.
Just the words dried up.
*
Friends disappear
off the face of the earth.
For what it’s worth
I loved you.
But you can’t hear.
*
Is said (what few
elders we have left)
anyone for whom birds sing
all night through to dawn
are themselves
close to eternal bird-song:
their time, among these branches,
that of the elders—not long.
*
If this were the view
I got all year through—
a branch of a tree at the window—
I would become that
branch of tree and with it
grow.
The nurses agree
I never complain
about the rain, or pain.
Easy, when you know
you’re a tree
at the window.
*
When I poured her a cup of tea
and asked her, strong or weak?
she held out a dark wrist:
same colour as this.
*
I’m off to look at angels.
And toetoe if I see it.
The family move in close.
No way out but
close my eyes to see
if anything’s left of the toetoe,
and the angels.
