(the Count of Montecillo*)
When I come into your room you're lying in bed
flat as a flounder with receding groper eyes
protruding from above the lip of a blanket
& the top of your head crowned Royal-like with
a woolly balac1ava pulled down over your rissoled
boiler-maker ears.
You complain of nothing but the cold.
You want your feet warmed up.
The room (facing the afternoon sun)
is as hot as a Central Otago wash house.
"Get my coat out of the cupboard
& put it over my feet will ya?"
I make a presentation of a meat pie
& you put it on the locker to join the clutter
of uneaten food & scraps of poems -- & a packet
of smoked eels wrapped in brown paper:
"You keep your eyes off those
they're mine!" -- & other bits of love
from 'out there'.
And even though you're as deaf as a dunny seat
I begin to tell you of my Christmas shopping,
but you're not listening -
you want the TV switched on: Channel 5 -
some girls with brown legs & microphones
jazzing & grinding to some UH! UH! tune --
"Turn it up! Turn it up!" you yell, "I can't hear it!"
"And -- one corn-fed chook for roasting, 2 kumera,
half a pumpkin -- & a tin of minted peas" -
"What are you saying?" -- "& 2 library books:
poems by Brian Turner & Bill Manhire."
"Bill who?" . . .
"Do you want a chocolate, Hone?"
"No!-- take the fucking things away -
I can't stand them!" --lips flapping
like 2 ripped mussels. . .
A nurse comes in with 3 heat-pads for your feet.
We're both facing the late afternoon sun
watching it go down behind the trees,
your hair standing up like a grey Jimi Hendrix.
"Look at those clouds -- don't they look menacing!
Golly -- look at the sun!" --
& then to me as I prepare to leave for home:
"Bring another meat pie will you brother,
when you next come?"
It was raining on Highgate when I got off the bus
to walk home to Maori Hill carrying
2 bags of groceries, a box of chocolates
& 2 library books. . . I regretted not taking
the overcoat you offered -- Shit! -
I could have sold it to the Hoc en for a packet! -
The great man's overcoat with a meat pie in each pocket!
When I wake later, at 3 am
& I can't get back to sleep I think of you
surrounded by unwanted chocolates, fruit,
empty lemonade bottles, uneaten pies & cold feet,
humming to yourself (as you d ) in the dark -
pissed-off because the nurses won't give you any
sleeping pills. . .
It rains all night, & in the morning there's
a small river running past my back door
threatening to dislodge the potplants.
But regardless of the weather, the blonde
bombshell postie with naked brown legs
arrives down the drive with another sack
of bloody Christmas cards!
Friend -
I'm not here to pinch your eels!
I'm not here to slurp up your oysters!
Let's yell at each other about the past.
Do you remember that dungy flat in Dundas Street?
Do you remember the fiasco with the professor's wife?
You tell me:
"The Maoris have 2 gods,
Rangi -- the sky,
Papa -- the earth."
And I ask: "What about Tangarpa?"
"Oh yes," you reply without hesitation, "the sea-
the giver of food. . . Essential!"
You wanted the SQUID RECIPE -
here it is:
Squid with Oyster Sauce
(for Hone)
12 squid rings (either sex),
fried with onion & garlic (chopped)
to the tune of Squid him
Squid her -
2 plates of hot steamed rice,
a handful of parsley,
soy sauce (as much as you like!) -
(& noodles, if you'd rather not have rice),
topped with baked kumera & steamed puha
& a cold mince pie.
Oooooo!! Weeeee!!! Yeahhhh!!!!
27/12/05
*NOTE: Montecillo is a home for war veterans in Dunedin. In 2005 , Hone recuperated there after hospitalization for an illlness.
