Giant Grass

In dirt as warm as down
two boys build a fort from broken bamboo.

Plastic-soldiers, navy-frigate blue
and moulded into frozen attitudes of war,

squint to aim needle-guns at giant grass
and the outer-space of blue

eucalyptus. Sometimes in their sights,
the cursive curl and loop

of blackbirds
across the afternoon's hard light.

They plot onslaughts,
declare the wisdom of camouflage

and plunder the ground for rough twigs
of dead pine and leaves of dock.

And the closeness of dancing birds
calms and fixes my heart

as if forever on the lazy harbour,
the milky ocean,

as these soldiers safely wage
their strange and immobile war.

by Kay McKenzie Cook
from Made for Weather (Dunedin 2007)


Reproduced with kind permission from Kay McKenzie Cook
Image taken from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/Four_US-Soldiers_watching_allied_bombardement.jpg/750px-Four_US-Soldiers_watching_allied_bombardement.jpg