Wakatipu

March in Queenstown, remember the ice we climbed, 
you seven months pregnant at Fox Glacier, 
sees winter start it's pour at two thousand metres, 
as autumn suns itself across the surface 
of the lake. 

We'd arrived, hitching rides down the West Coast, 
the winding roads seeing you sick again 
and again, your hair, blond then, 
streaming from rear windows in southern winds 
and sun bleached. 

Where we pitched our tent under trees 
by the lakeside was latent with wild grass 
and hints of gold, the Rush called off years ago, 
the soil offering torn shards of it's past, 
forgotten now. 

The morning after I filled the tent with several 
stomachs full of dry Montana White 
I found you gone and searched the lake shore 
without success till the surface tension broke 
and you rose 

reeking of Wakatipu, your hair a waterfall 
rinsed of my stench and fragrant now, cold washed 
clean of all my blunt betrayals, how I had 
failed in the ever fathomless past and would,
you knew, again.