CILLA MCQUEEN

window

The port sounds carried off by wind,
the drivers of the tall grey cranes 
at screens in their control towers shift 
containers in a giant Rubik's Cube. 

Bees tumble among foxglove fingers.
White flowers open speckled throats.
The ochre wood-chip mountain glows. 

Dazzle: the setting sun reflected on the
windscreen of a truck across the road,
new photons streaming from their source to that 
windscreen, this eye, this hand that writes 

until with earthly turn, unearthly
brilliance disconnects, is gone.  

Cilla McQueen has lived and worked in the southern port of Bluff, Motupōhue, since 1996. She has published seventeen collections of her poetry. Among her many awards is the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry, 2010. Cilla was the National Library New Zealand Poet Laureate, 2009-2011.

McQueen comments: 'From my viewpoint I watch the harbour, the weather, the distant mountains, and the 24/7 work of the port. There's always something to see and hear, from seagulls to engines; for example, the heavy trucks bringing newly minted aluminium from the smelter; the log-trucks endlessly refilling the great stockpiles of timber and wood-chips awaiting export.'

​Poem source details >

 

Photographer credit: Libby Furr