poppies

For Derek Jarman

romance is all anyone can talk about

sitting in the backyard

the cat perched between us

pawing at the petalled ground

the oriental poppies lipstick-red

floating in the breeze

we discuss the impossibility of it

our stomachs pressed to the earth

how can we open ourselves up

the way the poppies do in summertime

letting out their crimson insides

every summer they regrow themselves from scattered seeds

showy mouths puckered to the sun

the wind buffets Jarman in his garden in Dungeness

and i am alive with the feeling of synchronicity 

he waits for his poppies to grow

bringer of dreams / and sweet forgetfulness

here the wind blows, the grass blows

i put my fingers through 

my poppies take blood

held up by their small necks

soon they will be gone

petals loosening

but i see other buds threatening 

to reveal themselves to me

romance is a poppy bloomed and already gone

and you want what you already have

heartland

after Tim Jones

     across the wet highway

          a mill on a river

                   a gutsful of smelter

            the water rose

            on algal blooms cyan

our kanakana ancestors

threatening faster

we made a deal to the river

the way flowers catch rain

   flowed first-hand

      imperceptible

         the way it turned

the rain in Lake Wakatipu

                working-class waters

       swept plainly

                      we saw the world at sea

                armed with earth and aluminium 

               river pooled like blood on front lawns

             they want ammonia

              they want it crumbling

                     the town elsewhere

                       home in the floodwaters

                         slunk in forever

                      they forced the clouds further north

                   it was legal

                this violence

          all rising happily

     with hearts empty

     people go downstream

       with the chemicals

            lost in the catchment

              across the wet highway

Stacey Teague (Ngāti Maniapoto/Ngāpuhi) is a writer and teacher living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Her second poetry collection Plastic was published by Te Herenga Waka University Press in March 2024. She is a publisher and editor at Tender Press.