Poem: My view

My living room window
is like a giant picture frame,
the picture within dynamic,
swaying with the wind,
glistening with rain,
baking in the hot sun,
whitewashed by the persistent mist of spring.

I see a little starling
climbing in a drainpipe,
fearless and adamant
about something we must know.

The rainbow rooftops twist and turn,
crafting a maze of streets below me,
through which the cars and buses weave
like tiny toys I could bend down
and pick straight up.

The feathered friends bustle and frolic,
the tui puffed up like
an angry ball ready to explode,
its hoots and clucks and screeches,
the soundtrack of life in this forest-city.

A cloud of bright green poofs bounce along
as if pulled on an invisible string from above,
the beloved waxeye gracing the bush below
for the briefest moment,
before dancing off elsewhere.

The heavyweight champion of the neighbourhood
occasionally lands on a telephone wire,
gathering every morsel of effort
to flap its wings and heave its body onwards.

Man-made birds of steel soar across the bay,
their bodies climbing higher,
slicing through the crisp sea air
to destinations of city and sea and bush galore.

Sometimes the mist coats the view
in a film of ambiguity
and as it slowly clears
pieces of the picture appear,
like the slow unwrapping of a present.

A coastal road,
a cluster of pōhutukawa trees,
a weaving-winding bus,
one piece at a time until the puzzle is complete,
and that most familiar of views,
is revealed to me again.