I meet my friend, she has just flown in, and here we are in the Octagon

We go for gelato, tiramisu for her, me always mango, because it tastes

like summer, or a shining melody

sweetly played in tune

 

I read that in a Burns’ poem about luve, of course

It is out of date to my way of thinking – mango and love

are not always sweet, and these days there is

discord in our streets

 

I tell my friend of the hospital marches, of the recent hikoi

She says she wants to know more, and remarks on changing light

and I nod at our sky, so fulsome and pink like it’s holding something, maybe everything,

and say: how much time you got?

 

We stroll up and around the gentle slope of the hill, and she looks down

and asks about the plaques – Ihimaera and Tuwhare, Sargeson and Lord

and Turner, our new Poet Laureate of Nature

also of course Janet Frame

 

I take my friend to places of women among men

Edmond and Dallas, Hyde and McQueen – exactly eight voices

singing in the Octagon, and we say their names out loud

as we keep moving, keep talking

 

We are standing in the shadow of Rabbie, at the top, when

I remember the thing about the time capsule

buried under one of them – Joan de Hamel, her

X marks the spot

 

And I wonder what our time capsule would look like

if we buried one today – what we would gather to speak

for our world, whether there would be room for all

things we wish to save

 

My friend asks me how long I’ll stay, how my job’s working out

We are mere transients, I think, recalling the words of another

Scottish poet, recent visitor to our town, and now we are in the hot, hot sun,

and our ice creams are gone