By Samantha Montgomerie

Adrift, here in this wind-whipped isle
on the edge of the world,
where mountains grip sky with razored teeth,

I sip tea from stamped china,
the blue-bells of Gran’s childhood rooting deep outside.
Her time-worn hands rifle well-thumbed leaves,
pausing at Thrushcross Grange and Pemberley
to ramble and rove through memory

yet my roams are more rugged -
Hundred Acre Wood always lichen clad,
cradled by mountains crowned in snow -
streams rumbling with ice melt and rain,
pulsing through Papatuanuku’s veins.

Now, clothed in its moss green and grammar-school crimson,
A Pageant of English Verse hugs Hone,
while Palgrave’s Treasury burrows into Baxter,
                                                spine to spine, spooning -

Winifred Nellie Smith etched in ink on time-worn leaves.
I imagine Keats hearing the holes in the silence of Hone’s rain,
while Wordsworth wanders lonely in this distant land,
                                                floating on high over Rangi’s sky,
surrendering his heart to the high country,

while I sip tea from a stamped china cup in the corner of my lounge,
on the edge of the world -
watching falcons soar through gold-tipped clouds,
framed by peak and sky.