Drift
Lynn Davidson
Lynn Davidson is a poet, fiction writer and creative writing teacher. She undertook a PhD in Creative Writing at Massey University and is one of the editors of this anthology. The poem ‘Drift’ references the stream that runs under the Carillon. It imagines the sound of this hidden stream rising up from underground to play a different music.
Drift
Stephen Burt says snow
makes American poetry American,
and so I wonder if the sea —
let’s just say water —
makes New Zealand poetry New Zealand.
Take the stream that runs
under the carillon — it goes on ringing,
drops flicking against stone and singing,
at night when in the tower the stilled bells
become women in great brass dresses, ascending.
We could hear the stream as
a four or five-note memory
of sky and loss and journeying. An Aotearoa sound
that drifts up from underneath
rather than from a ringing-cold sky
descending.