The Coast Remains Poem by Terence George Craddock (Spectral Images and Images Of Light)

Mythical treasured inheritance...
Nourish vibrant individuals.
Dwell in beauty bred remain
sustain voyagers noble just free
crossing quest far foreign sea.
The Coast Remain abide in me.

Your spectral images flow
like coast hearts of gold
from thee to gratified me.
Reflecting moods of seasons...
boiling to storm torn surf.
Calming as mountain lakes.
Still serene tranquility.

I've walked through
your kaleidoscope of mountainous
images, among adrenaline peaks,
to your subtropical rain forests.
Passing solitary mist moss gilded
light filled transcendent rapture trees.

Over sparkling creeks I oft stepped,
my surge spirit moving on to shores.
Out over vast ghostly loneliness
of home wave running Tasman Sea.

Your youth now fled
in torrents like flash floods
across far distant seas.
Lost to adventure appeal gaze
of quest distant horizons.

Images of beauty held close.
Are soul spirit nurture digested
as appeasing native cuttings
saplings urgently growth viewed
as economy down turn swings.

Sending employment eager hosts
rushing forth like bone-soaking
coastal torrential cloudbursts.
Our fair youth to ideas fertilize
other spirit alien parched shores
to enrich other cultures peoples.

In shrine still eternal coastal beauty
are imbued child ambassadors remember,
coast birth seeded venture children
afar apart from rib mystical revered thee.
Fitting epitaph to alpine range coast
to both coast and surf rolling coaster.

On West Coast of New Zealand were
white foam wave crests born bred.
The coast remain, it abides
it's alive, it survives in me.

I've cursed coast spectacular
wild rugged, broken impeding;
hiking glorious alpine traverse;
micro climate mystic terrain.
Which wait a minute impedes;
scrub bush movement so fiercely.

Each muscle...
taut strung step.
Is an agony...
of bitter gain.

I've cursed rapid swollen creeks,
stinking mud, chill torrential rain.
Sandflies, mosquitoes, swarming,
feeding bites, pest near drive insane.

I've cursed a so called Labour Party...
from settlement of her conception birth.
A political party that should be Blackballed...
by voters; who gave all blood,
within her toiling laboring veins.

We laboured workers,
gave her iron lifeblood fire,
to be province class betrayed,
by Parlimentary Shame.

A damning testimony
is electral grass roots failure.
Post-mortem dismal report
reviewal of election promises.
Shows chronic job losses
recession not escalated gain.

Wild rugged outdoor occupations
conservation locked aren't preserved,
under tight overzealous, callous;
plotted campaign compromise pressures.
Our jobless youth surplus run off
as rain absorbed in porous soil.

Taxed trimmed
unemployed youth,
an economic cost,
of running plan efficient;
theoretically implemented;
regional hybrid systems.

Taxed trimmed
supposed justifiable,
generational future loss,
when running scaling down;

renewable sustainable
ecological green systems,
for vote winning appeasement,
of insulated city voters.

Coast problems are as layered
as majestic Pancake Rocks,
without syrup to sweeten
stacked limestone outcroppings,
or picture postcard Punakaiki.

This salt weathered pill
is vented in quiet indignation.
Ghost windswept desolation
of abandoned Denniston Plateau.

Against an indifferent beehive,
where political drones fail dismally
to grasp massive uplifted,
enormity of rural youth erosion.

For melody true song of Tui,
of Bellbird, is lost in cracked
laid concrete, in tarred
snarl, of traffic hoking horn.

A chilling numbness
hangs over mystified
stupefied ineffectual.
Bureaucratic complacency.

Continued progressive extraction of coast
host blood mined mineral wealth.
Is hangover stilled parasite squeezed
from rural rugged resourcefulness.
Laboured ethnic romance of colonial past.

Gravestones erected mark
plodding passage of years,
in bush overgrown forgotten
in presently used cemetries.

Still legendary West Coast
honours her fallen war dead.
As still march veteran RSA
each year on dawn Anzac day.

But marches are much more
than moments of remembrance,
for soldiers who fell for faded freedom.
West Coast gave in heavy measure
her proud rural colonial sons
among bravest of the brave.

Three only have ever taken
a double V.C. Three twice won.
Twice won. The Victoria Cross.
Coveted V.C. and Bar
famed rare courage won.

Two were intrepid worthy medics.
Upham alone a bloodied soldier.
Leading among West Coast sons
to battle; to death; to defeat; to victory.

Fighting for New Zealand.
For peace among smoking ash.
Where free men must make a stand.
Fighting for belief, freedom,
your dying mate at either hand.

Fighting among comrades stacked,
like matchwood, torched; decapitated.
Later to be, laid beneath neat rows...
white crossed graves symbolically
symbolizing freedom defended land.

Fighting for belief, freedom.
A vision. A vision. Of Future World Peace.
For sons. For daughters. For children still to come.
Little knowing generations later Government
would betray, their loyal trusting sons.

The coast remains, it abides,
it's alive, it survives in me.
Love for thee in me never falters,
endures to aspiring grandeur,
glacial flows, of Southern Alps.

Back bone separate identity.
Locked uncompromising in heirs
to spirit, of majestic raw beauty.
Dominant, in land march of the free.

In your still coastal beauty
as a shrine remember,
your birth distant children
far apart from thee.



Copyright © Terence George Craddock
Written in March 1989 on the 26.3.1989.