Sounding

Notes jog across a page
down the watercolours of window.
A park gulps.

Phonemes gleam between seaweed.
Trees are tall as ships.
Harbour lift

out of the winter glip,
swimming to Ninevah.
Phosphorescent as memory,

breach of Babylon.
Ambergris wishes
riding on sine waves.

Grazing the goonlaze.
Paddocks of plankton
filled with krill.

Spouting acoustics
from Ladbroke Grove station

to echolocation.

uncollected, first published in the Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive, © Briar Wood 2004, used by permission of the author. Recording from the Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive 2004.

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