Lucky Me
Authors: Fred Simpson
UCKY
M
E
!
Fred Simpson
© 2011 Fred Simpson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any meansâgraphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systemsâwithout the prior written permission of the author.
ISBNs:
Parent - 978-1-908477-39-2
ePub - 978-1-908477-40-8
Mobi - 978-1-908477-41-5
Published by Original Writing Ltd., Dublin, 2011.
The book is dedicated with love and gratitude, to John.
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Linaria, Birch Seed, Earthquake, Smoke in Winter, Crack---Crack
and
Mother and Child
have been, or are due for publication, in
POETRY New Zealand.
Girl Skin, Alienation, The Core, Lion, Interface
and
My Brother's Ducks in Vietnam
have been published in
THE MOZZIE,
Queensland, Australia.
Meeting, Breaking News, Since Then!, Funfear, “Leap, Frog!”, Umzingwane, River Remembered, Cow, Fuchsia, Suburbia
and
Sublimation
have been published in
VALLEY MICROPRESS,
Wellington, New Zealand.
Fish
has been published in
NEW CONTRAST,
Cape Town, South Africa.
Mummy
has been accepted for publication by
a fine line,
the magazine of The New Zealand Poetry Society.
IOGRAPHY
F
RED
S
IMPSON
was born in 1949 in South Africa but was raised and educated in Zimbabwe. He briefly taught English in Bulawayo in the early â70s, and then studied medicine in Cape Town.
The focus of his medical career has always been in rural General Practice, first in South Africa, and then in New Zealand, which he and his family moved to in 1987.
He continues to work as a doctor, but his âsecret love' of writing, (producing the occasional poem), is no longer a secret! In the past few years he has written a short novel and a two act play (both unpublished), as well as a number of poems, several of which have been published in literary magazines in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.
He lives in Cambridge, New Zealand, with his wife and his dog. His two children live abroad.
Lucky Me!
includes a selection of forty nine poems written over the past few years. The poems have been arranged into 7 sets of 7, and they reflect Simpson's range in theme and style. Most aligned themselves, but some were âdifficult' and uncertain of their place. The composite expresses the poetic imperatives of someone who is both troubled and content.
ONTENTS
O
NE
Seventh
C
UT
F
LOWERS
A flower grew
with the morning sun,
an iris, blue,
with a protruding tongue.
It offered lyrics
for an empty song
for the two we grew,
and then were gone.
EAR
D
EATH
Since it was Easter
she expected the full
moon to illuminate
her tunnel home, but
rain slapped the wind
screen with fury.
Then, as luck would
have it, she spotted
red eyes, and was
doggedly able to
follow the tail
of a drunk truck.
IWAKAWAKA
Unfathomable light links
my dream and consciousness. Phloem
(growing old) arches and
resettles as I shift.
No dawn song. Lorry
tyres on the tar.
With half eyes I
scan the drawn curtain
for the dormitory moon, for
the placid wound that
offered bile instead of kiss;
and turn my rugby neck.
Soft photons etch her maiden
nose and silver pillows her
hair. Lips sip cold, and
her left ear is deaf
to the clock. Sally snorts
and I leave the bed for a piss.
My molten ache is poem
past. There is no one else to miss.
I giggle at the bowl and
conjure up the moon caught
naked in a breaker's curl, our
stolen rose, and the
1
piwakawaka's jig.
1
A small bird native to New Zealand. Also called a fantail.
HIEF
I will steal a rose
for you again, even
at risk time, even
when a half-moon
only half conceals;
  I will steal a rose.
I will sway it in
your sleeping breath
again, again will;
regardless of the
spiralling moon-pull,
  I will steal a rose.
WENTY
F
IFTH
W
EDDING
A
NNIVERSARY
Silver? No. No, ours is better still
My Lovely; ours is grey, favourite grey,
tucked feather grey ---
âcoor- coor, coor- coor'---
calling him, calling him. Ours is spent
flame and calm metal water,
earth turning ash in the east.
Silver is too fine, a mere slit
in the spectrum. Ours is pencil shade
My Love, brush with soft bristle,
Zorba
dancing, dancing on moon chalk, black
pearl, birch skin bluff-dead above snow,
and steel fish drifting in shallows.
UBLIMATION
Like a ray
he swam, and she,
each through the eye
of the other,
  their slow light
lighting up jelly, membrane, electric
nerve tissue,
forming a conduit
of dangling bulbs,
burning anew old
touches that jolted
the quivering tips
of each amygdala fold.
PRING
We are tilted and tree-young,
Rinsed new with the rising
Sap, corpse-dyed, mesmerized
By tufts of inchoative
Green, hooded and poised
Like clitoris and tongue.
We, once-wilted, are stung,
Jolted by current to run,
Run, chased by electrons from
Root to root-bound lung,
                      new-sprung.
WO
Sevenths
A P
OEM
F
OR
M
Y
S
ON
Among washed rocks
she runs, making heaven
with her father
on the promised sand.
Disappointment is effectively
dispensed with by a crab
held high, in triumph.
He approaches for his daughter
to hold, to marvel as the creature
moves asquint, views asquint
their primitive connection,
            making heaven
as I did, with dog hair on hessian.
Her papa is imprinted,
embedded and petrified like myth,
nurtured in sequence with
splinter-hurt, ant smell, and mother-made rain.
ISH
The sun had not yet breached the line
of hills hemmed in, (gentian, jagged
hills), and the inlet at the turn was
smooth as paint.
Novice father, novice son sat down where they were
bid, as everyone but they had settled in the stern
and everyone but they was busy
with his hook.
The vessel shuddered as diesel turned
the screw, then puttered to the entrance
of the harbour where the current strained
to claim more sea.
Each was silent as the skipper crossed the
bar, then up each jumped to stab at bait
with kukri primed on oil stone. They
could not wait,
they had no time to catch the streak
of orange red nor spot the sweeping gull
miss fish, but seconds had them holding taut
their rods with leather grip.
At last the boat approached the reef and idled
as the anchor chain was dropped below her bow.
The motor cut, and hesitation held until a nod allowed