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jump said dad under a blue sky. but he did not why. i am eleven and too heavy with the beauty of life. he has come down a silvermilk glacier. its top a jaw of mountainteeth. all new and white what with the blue above and the three skitracks slipped into its soft declining tongue. and a star still or already in the blue sky so unusedup the sky that it is new or he feels new under it.

how often i sat and dangled my legs on the little jetty in the lake. watching mountains. watching the sun decline upwards on them. the snow still yellow at the top. and longed to be there. amidst no names or stories. in the last of it. new in it. where at the end of the lake faroff bushcovered shapes made room for the rise of the mountain. and the snow all yellow there. and a minute more blue like death. with the sun climbed away. despairing then. and wanting to be home.

what would it be to love it in its darkness. all of it. the new world. coldcurled beside a babyglow of fern. near low waves that eat sand with white bubbles. under a star still or already in the black sky. asleep in manuka. sweetwater rushing past his ears. and in the mountain. or on its top. when the snow goes blue and dark. and no hut or home.

he stands where dad is calling him to jump. the sun is shining and he is warm. his little face is burned to paper with snowglare. pieces float away like toitoi feathers. and alight lightly on the snow. where they fail in wetness and flood themselves minutely into softnothings. little parts of him. he can push his finger between his old face his old skin and his new. it is good to feel new. babynew. moist and tender. with no name and no stories. page 178 mum has knitted his hat. it is embarrassed by a maculated pompom. but it is hut and home. should the sun suddenly decide to turn the world dark and blue and cold. and the world cannot be loved in its coldness. or if they should have missed their time. but that is a mothers thought. there is no intent in the land. the land will not surprise me. not in this hat. except by its beauty that makes me heavy.

his goggles are of the old kind. a kind of soft tin. with an elastic ribbon behind. and green glass. and little oblong holes in the rims. they press on his old face and hold bits of it there when they could fall to the snow. and for a while with them on the world was green. but now it is blue and white again. and kind of green. but less green than before. but much whiter and bluer when i take them off to brush my old face away to the snow and touch the babyskin on the top of my cheeks.

how long ago. how many skins past. when the sky was so blue. when he followed dad and dad was there walking in front of him his boots in the snow on the track in the mush of little browngreen manuka leaves on pebbles and riverstones white in the sun and through creeks and through rivers white and blue in the sun white and blue with melted ice from the silvermilk glacier somewhere from the rising mountain between the bushcovered hills slipping on creekrocks and riverstones that made a clockclock as they rocked under boots their boots dad in front him following through scratchy bush over vegetablesheep mountaindaisies and swingbridges up ridges and going on on on bluntly through wind and in the end down to mud and dust and speargrass and down to a road some unsealed road and the car and lemonade in a plastic bottle and home.

consider things lightly. let nothing come between an active joy and the love of it. not even thought. not even thinking. and this is the land of it.

i sucked at the plastic bottle of lemonade all the way home. watching the bubble that disappeared behind the greenyellow label. watching for its going on to the top. the dark old store by the lake. where page 179 tilley lamps hung from the sooted roof. and gumboots hung on wires. blankets and bootlaces folded on shelves. dubbintins matches and candleboxes. scroggin and toiletpaper and rope and smelling of woodfire and wood. liquorice icecream chewinggum and the old man with a beard and a bushshirt at the back with a packhorse and a weskit and a pickaxe and a tin basin who went away to the bush like men at the end of films.

and a little iceaxe. and a little pack. with nuts chocolate apples orangesquash throaties and barleysugar. and an oily parka wrinkled black like a dried seal.

bridges and flax. village halls and drinkhotels. houses verandahs and corrugated iron rooves. the smell of woodfire and wood. foxgloves and poplars. pineforests picnicbenches rivers reserves hills dust. and sometimes a car. and sometimes a high bird. all the way home.