Title: Sport 37

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, 2009, Wellington

Part of: Sport

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Sport 37: Winter 2009

Mary Macpherson

page 136

Mary Macpherson

South Island Map

1.

Once, the map had my childhood at the start—
even then I suspected my world was too small.
My greatest fear was that I would never
scramble over our fence and run far enough away.

2.

Today, I unfolded a map as large as my body
and I was afraid of stepping onto the land.

I was afraid of the long brown road
at the centre of the island and the spine
of mountains that ran beside it. I imagined
trees blowing in the wind.

3.

When my father died, I knew our bodies
could fail. When my father was gone
it was hard to even remember
my fiercely held desire to run.

4.

Mirrors in motels did strange things
to my body. One made me tall and thin
but with a pointed head. In another
I was as wide as an ironing board.

On satin bedspreads I peered at the map
as if it held the rules
for entry to a foreign land.

page 137

5.

Some days I loved the roads.
You were at the wheel and over
and over we stopped to photograph
what was on our minds.

6.

Your picture of the girl in Hampden was me
in childhood. I was on that road—a few houses,
a field of rough grass where horses grazed.
I was about to turn into Square Street.
A shopping bag trailed from my hand
as I walked the distance to my house on the hill.

7.

To journey you have to have 'a heart
of steel, not a heart that is broken . . .'
I read that in a novel and wrote it down
on a scrap of paper. I wanted it to imply
that travellers have to be stout-hearted
and love adventure.

8.

Today, we saw poplars on small hills
that looked like feathers planted in the land.
When the wind blew, their leaves flashed
like silver coins.

page 138

My Accomplishments

My skates bite the thick ice
as my clever white boots
carve an 8, then 8 backwards

and backwards again, scoring
lines on the frozen dam.
John Hore's country songs

play tinnily from speakers
on poles. John's from round here
and that's thrilling

like flying round and round
the dam until I'm bored
and grab another kid and go

to where the surface creaks
and even further out, before racing
to the safety of the bank.

Then in Mr Coulter's small
upstairs rooms, I'm on fire,
strumming my ukulele,

belting out Mockin' Bird Hill—
just like The Singing Rage, Miss Patti Page.
Next it's the Limbo Rock. Mr C holds

the stick and other kids watch me
bend over backwards, lower and lower—
I'm under! But soon

page 139

my friend Pam and I prepare
for the fancy dress competition
in our holiday-town hall.

In red lipstick, shiny dresses
and big hats decorated
with purple crepe paper

we teeter along in the line
of cowboys, pirates and rabbits
and I think it only right

when the MC says 'First prize
goes to the two ladies!' We've won
a ride in Gerald George's aeroplane.

In the air the plane skews the town
with its pointed larch trees, roads
rush away and I'm pressed hard

against the tiny window because
I can't find my wooden house
on its pebbly section, or any sign

of my mother, father and brother,
down where they should be,
waving.