Sketches

sketches:

a trick of the eye

outside my window

there's a tūī

sliding

with quick, deft movements

between the pink branches

of the spring plum

with a touch of white blossom at its throat

These are lines caught on the fly. Poems which capture and celebrate the momentary nature of existence. Here we find the natural world, and matters of the heart, caught as they happen in language both natural and precise. They are beautifully complemented by the drawing and sketches of Leila Lees.

'Sketches, a skein of fleeting moments arrested on the page, manages with its glancing, darting reflections and philosophical perceptions, to find just the right formulation to deliver a descriptive vitalism that is open, alert, tentative, ambulatory, elegant, palpable.'