Oh Yes, It's Thursday

I'm in holiday mode, which means I don't really remember which day of the week it is. And I don''t have to remember, until next Wednesday when I go back to work. Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Day and the day after are all public holidays in New Zealand. Only a few work on the days in between and many offices shut altogether. The shops, though, are closed on Christmas Day only, and the next day the sales start. I'm not sure how these are different to the pre-Christmas special offers when everyone competes for the Christmas shopping dollar. However, it came in handy because just before Christmas, I did a huge mountain of laundry, and then discovered our dryer wasn't working properly. So we have bought a new one at 20% off.

Oh yes, it's supposed to be summer. Someone forgot to tell the weather masters. Finally, though, we have had two nice sunny days in a row, and I have started exercising again after all the holiday food. I took a walk up the hill today and remembered this piece that I wrote a month or so back when I had one of my fitful attempts at writing a poem a day. This is today's contribution for Poetry Thursday:

Rapaki Track

A hawk lifts over the ridge
and skates in tight circles
on the blue rink of the sky.
Serrated wingtips blade the air.
He is searching for movement
but there is only the white stillness
of the grass in the wind,
water running in the cleft
of the valley. He circles and
circles and then spins off northwards
towards the city. A plane
is rising in the east to meet him.

I didn't see a hawk up there today, but I did see another wild species - a bagpiper. I think he goes up there regularly to practice, I've seen him before. And by the river, before I reached the hill, this fellow posed for me - he let me get as close as about a metre away before he flew off.