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Child Coming Home in the Rain from the Store
by Hone Tuwhare
Child Coming Home in the Rain from the Store - Hone Tuwhare
Child Coming Home in the Rain from the Store
When I see you pause
make talk dawdle-walk
on the back road to your house
your house overlooking
the timber mill and timber yard
I know you stop only to talk
not to the cruel metalled road
but to a stone a solitary stone
sharp-edged with flat shiny
faces
Through your mind’s eye know
the feel of washed leaves
made green again: tall rain-shafts
drifting: wind wincing
a water-filled pot-hole
And I child-delighting share
your long walk your talk
to things and for things along
the bent road to your house
where impatiently
others wait for the damp bread
you bring
'Child Coming Hom', from Small Holes in the Silence: Collected Works (Godwit, Random House, 2011), Hone Tuwhare 2011, used by permission of Rob Tuwhare on behalf of the Estate of Hone Tuwhare. Recording from the Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archives 2004.