Driving Puccini to work

The Chinese princess approaches the intersection.
She chooses her moment with care.

Morning mist freezes the windscreen –
Your glove is rimed with ice.

You remember the boy who listened
To his parents’ records, in secret.

The nuns said he sang like an angel,
Though he understood not a word.

Cherry blossoms puff into spring,
Each pearled petal a pure note.

Swelling voices melt the traffic.
The car dissolves, a well of sound.

Swimming with Dolphins

‘A natural experience’
Akaroa tourist brochure

Swimming, with dolphins.
The comma curves
And dives beneath the line,
With a flick of its tail.
It is neither here
Nor there
But important, still,
Solid,
A pause in the waves,
A white ripple on the surface,
A sleek dark body
Beneath

The sundried hills
Like a paper cut out
Two dimensional
Under the blue sky.
A backdrop,
A prop in this ‘experience’.
Ochre, dun,
Or yellow brown,
A dark sludge of khaki
Where bush straddles the hollows.

This is a sentence.
A string of words,
Countless drops of water
Running off a wetsuit,
The click of cameras
Recording syllables,
Or blank stretches of water,
Where the dolphins had been
A moment before.

This is a theatre.
Play, scene, act,
Parts, words, scripts,
A dialogue for mute and voices.