Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Two Nov-Dec 2026.
Finding your feet in a foreign land, poem by Denise Teresa O’Hagan.
Finding your feet in a foreign land
You say hello and get a smile
not a whisper of suspicion for your friendly
overfriendly demeanour just a return
like a tennis ball hit swiftly and with certainty
back over the net.
Lush green nature spills out of every space, abounds in cracks
on pavements, in dishevelled or well-kept front yards, punga
cabbage trees, puriri, titoki, pohutukawa, rich dense city
scape as emerald and full of friendliness and village charm
as the humidity that encloses Tamaki Makaurau
In the mall carpark, I bump into Suzie, a checkout operator I’ve known
for decades, wonders where I’ve been, we chat like long lost buddies.
In the health food store, I start up a conversation with the shop owner
an immigrant from Bolivia, came over in the 80s, we talk like friends
about poverty in South America, politics and the state of this nation.
Camaraderie second nature, our culture as lush, full and verdant as the flora
And as I face the dry, grey, ochre coloured earth flood of busy
‘somewhere to be’ faces at Melbourne airport Indigenous
culture one word of welcome wominjeka soon lost
amongst the colonised masses the sad plastic monstera flat
dust covered searching for a way out
the uber line stretching for 100 meters I snake
my silent way “home”
© Denise Teresa O’Hagan
Denise Teresa O’Hagan has a Master of Creative Writing from AUT, a Botany Degree and several postgrads in various subjects. She writes both poetry and fiction and has had poems published in Fresh Ink, NZ Poetry Society’s Anthology, ‘a fine line’, takahē, Tarot, Fast Fibres, The Blue Nib and Live Encounters Poetry. She is currently working on several novels in historical and contemporary fiction.