Good policing

Full marks to the police for the swift arrest  of a man who has been charged in relation to rape and theft from Dutch tourists who were sleeping in their car in Tuatapere.

So many blogs . . .

Oh dear, I don’t need any more excuses for work avoidance but Inquiring Mind  has pointed me to Alf Grumble, the long-serving, hard working and obviously modest MP for Eketahuna North who has been driven to blogging by the MSM’s failure to notice him.

I’m delighted to have another provincial/rural voice in the blogosphere. While I still chortle over John Clark’s skit A Mystery in Eketahuna,  and have passed through the town I’m not familiar with Alf’s electorate and have to confess I didn’t realise he was in the National caucus although this post  suggests he is.

Somewhat further to the left, and without Alf’s sense of humour, is another newish blog, Kiwipolitico which has joined my list of daily reads. Today Anita is wanting to know who took down Winston?

For something usually sans politics but with plenty of humour, Laughykate is also worth a regular check.

Where poetry stars on Homepaddock on the last day of the working week, it’s Friday Frocks  over at Craft Is The New Black  (and who couldn’t like someone adicted to presents, chocolates, cherries and sun?).

On the subject of delicious things, Bitsontheside has discovered chocolate pencils.

Back to matters rural, The Bull Pen  is another must-read.

Ten minute break haiku

The T.S. Elliott poetry prize, which is awarded for the best collection of new poetry published in the UK and Ireland in the past year, was won by Jen Hadfield on Monday.

The award was given for her book Nigh-No Place published by Blood Axe Books, 2008. 

That was a good excuse for a second Friday’s poem which comes from that book and was written when she was working in a fish factory.

Ten-minute break haiku

Just the blades prattling
on cartilage – cut here, here –
a good, fat fillet.

My friend the Cuckoo
Wrasse, hauled from his dark holler,
wilting on ice. Alas.

Breading haddock, I
bury in the coarse, bright dunes
the pale, wet children.

I finger the curious, quilted sphincter, being
like this, inside, too.

Gut-worms, christ! Still I
pluck them from the membranes,
one by one.

– Jen Hadfield –

No Ordinary Sun

The ODT reminded me that today is the first anniversary of Hone Tuwhare’s death which makes his poem, No Ordinary Sun, an appropriate choice for this Friday’s poem.

I found it on Hone’s website.

Tree let your arms fall:
raise them not sharply in supplication
to the bright enhaloed cloud.
Let your arms lack toughness and
resilience for this is no mere axe
to blunt nor fire to smother.

Your sap shall not rise again
to the moon’s pull.
No more incline a deferential head
to the wind’s talk, or stir
to the tickle of coursing rain.

Your former shagginess shall not be
wreathed with the delightful flight
of birds nor shield
nor cool the ardour of unheeding
lovers from the monstrous sun.

Tree let your naked arms fall
nor extend vain entreaties to the radiant ball.
This is no gallant monsoon’s flash,
no dashing trade wind’s blast.
The fading green of your magic
emanations shall not make pure again
these polluted skies . . . for this
is no ordinary sun.

O tree
in the shadowless mountains
the white plains and
the drab sea floor
your end at last is written.

 – Hone Tuwhare –