Poem of the Week: Just This by Brian Turner

From: Just This, Victoria University Press. $25.

Just This

All I can say
is that for me nothing hurts more

than leaving and nothing less than coming home
when a nor’wester’s gusting in the pines
like operatic laughter, and the roadside grasses

are laced with the blue and orange and pink
of bugloss, poppies and yarrow, all of them
swishing, dancing, bending, as they do, as we do.

Brian Turner’s ongoing love affair with his Central Otago home lies at the heart of his rich and compelling new collection of poems.