Under the Pines
- Rhian Gallagher
Their fine green packed in to make a dark
and this drew me on
round the lagoon. Paddocks open, swept with sunlight
and the pines
serious as a church.
I still hear their boughs
creaking like steps on stairs in depths of night.
Closer in the needles clarified
and the sound became a mast that might not hold.
To walk off the edge of the green world
and into their dust bowl,
that crypt-like half-shadowed temperature,
and once again
to stand there.
Resin scent rinsed like a sharp shower, tingled long after.
Not moving an inch,
myself to myself become a mystery.
• Rhian Gallagher is a Dunedin-based poet. Her second collection, Shift, from AUP, was recently released at the University Bookshop, Dunedin.
