Poem: Core Samples

They say that the Waikato dialect burbles like its river rapids, and

those by the sea are never sure if they’re coming or going. And

the ponies and people are short on Shetland;

the wind just sails right over them. When I moved to Aberdeen,

someone told me, “it takes a long time to chip past the granite.”

If I could extract core samples from my children

— my children, with their wayward vowels like

bramble vines snaking through cracks, over walls —

what would it show of this half year of two autumns?

Two summers of growth separated by an autumn;

would there be two soft pale rings side-by-side or,

if I ran my finger across, would an extra dense ridge rise to meet it?

My children: they’re fibrous as manuka trees on a windswept hillside

and linear as eucalypti lining a river’s bank,

twisting to resist the wind, and bending to meet the sun.

~

Ruth Wivell is a graduate student at Uniting Theological College, Parramatta entering formation for ordained ministry with the Anglican Diocese of Auckland in 2023.