Download PDF Here
Live Encounters Aotearoa New Zealand Poets & Writers April 2023
An Image Lost, poems by Piers Davies
An Image Lost
In that last moment of sleep
I see an image
fluttering
on a clothesline
in a ferocious storm
vivid and elongated
back-lit haunting.
Then it is ripped from my grasp
as consciousness and memory return.
Meditations of an Incredible Shrinking Man
“a dried leaf is still a leaf ”
The gaudy clothes of my youth
have faded with excessive sunlight.
Memories slide in and out
like a wayward concertina.
The periphery of the world contracts
while distances lengthen
and seem beyond reach—
sleep is the sole escape.
The circle tightens around
the pit of oblivion.
Padlocked
1
the Liquidator
has entered my life
locked and chained each gate
securing the few assets
for a fire sale
he’s pleasant even smiles
unlike the gloomy sympathy
of the precise undertaker
2
the corridors are empty
the concourse depopulated
all dreams and hopes are gone
even memories dissolve
3
it all boils down
to a balance sheet
which he, like Anubis,
will place on the scales of death.
© Piers Davies
Piers Davies was born in Sydney, Australia but has lived most of his life in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa New Zealand. He is a Law of the Sea specialist having graduated with an LL B from Auckland University and a Diploma ECL from City of London College. He has been a long-time writer and reciter of poetry. His poems have been published in journals and anthologies in New Zealand, Australia, UK, France, Switzerland, Poland, USA, South Africa and India. Four books of his poems have been published, including ‘Jetsam’ and ‘Force Majeure’. He is a coordinator of Titirangi Poets (first established in 1977) and co-editor of Titirangi Poets anthologies and Ezines. He has also been a scriptwriter and involved in the production of feature films (‘Homesdale’ and ‘The Cars That Ate Paris’ (Australia) and ‘Skin Deep’ (New Zealand)) short films and documentaries. He was sometime Poet Laureate of Haringey, London.