Castor Bay (4.30 pm)

[photograph: Dr John Ross (2005)]

Castor Bay

The day your driver stopped

not halfway home

to say another bus had crashed

in Takapuna

& he’d been told

to turn around

pick up the passengers

but you got out instead

thinking it might be quicker

to walk home

only to see his tail-lights

receding

before you got halfway there

your feet started to hurt

in those damned sandals

until you tried

that one surefire shortcut

that took so much longer

& you felt

not so much alive

as if you ought to feel

something like that