Michael Walker Poems

I know, or I think I know, where I was born.
New Plymouth, a city with two sprawling cemeteries,
where I found my grandparents' gravestones at last,
but they were covered in gray lichen and moss.
...

I can see your boarding house now,
A spacious, two-storied bungalow
That overlooked the blue-water harbour.
Your rambling house had good prospects.
...

Peter Snell was an unknown athlete
when he won the 800 metres gold medal
at the 1960 Rome Olympics, lunging at the tape
to just shade Roger Moens on the line.
...

I played goalkeeper.
I coached high school soccer teams:
I lost interest.
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Good manners sail on the Gulf Streamof mutual satisfaction:
Bad manners sail in the Southern Ocean of cold indifference.
If most people are well-mannered, all of society benefits.
After getting called out for yawning and not listening
...

I worked so long in the shadow of Bob Menzies,
that I was surprised when he did step down.
After a caucus vote, I stepped up to become
the seventeenth Prime Minister of Australia.
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It was my first experience of hard labour,
working in the green fields under the sun,
on a long working holiday near Motueka.
...

My city used to have video rental shops
dotted around the suburbs of escapism,
though for some time there has been just one,
which closed its doors last week.
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('Make a tree sound and its fruit will be sound; ...For the tree can be told by its fruit'. N.T. Matt.12: 33) .

The lemon tree still stands alone outside my bedroom
In a level weedless plot where it flourishes modestly
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1

En me promenant en bas de la Rue Princes
Avec de la glace et personne, je comprends
...