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Karl Stead

CK on Sunday: A poem by Karl Stead

Kohi Beach.

New series: a new poem by CK Stead every Sunday for the next four weeks  

On a day late summer in a poem like wine  

I ask what it’s like out there and she replies

‘Gorgeous – “like silk” to quote your lovely poem.’  

She must be third or fourth to tell me that –

so I’m known here as a poet, and for a line  

that says the water out at the yellow buoy

on a good day feels like silk.  For that nice trope  

I’m ‘famous at Kohi’ – but neither my recall

nor the books themselves seem to confirm I wrote it.  

Today’s one of those rare and windless ones,

the surface all the way to Rangitoto  

glassy, while the water that’s been tepid

now has a hint of winter, making it feel  

indeed like silk! – so I catch up with myself

on a day late summer in a poem like wine.  

Next Sunday's poem by CK Stead: "Thelma", a meditation on the departed

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