For The New Zealand Poet Sam Hunt Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

Flamboyant in his oversized

puff-sleeved white shirt

part pirate, part dandy or fop


slender legs in tight leathers,

with a blond mop bouffant,

he has somehow captured


what we are and how we are:

ordinary people contending

with desolation and disappointment


and the never-ending unease

of mortality and the loss of love

to a backdrop of beauty without pity.


Rather than turn the bleak pages

of time running short, running out

better to listen to the breaker-song


of the roiling ocean tracts

forty or fifty below, a play

of shingle and spent waves


as he speaks his poetry

lilting, pounding and gritty

rolling to rest inshore


grounded with the saltiness

of far distant southern islands,

A storm passed or threatening.