On Waitakere Dam

for Charles Brown

You wanted to up-end the boat
& set it on the lake we lived by
because no-one would know.
It was lavish with silverfish & looked
defeated, humped on its secret
like a hand. There was nowhere to go to

but the magnet of the middle-lake
where a vapour sat wide as Australia -
as sovereign, as separate, as intimate
with daylight, as ignorant
of clocks & raincoats & boats.
It threw a soft, unwatchable shimmer

we would not be human in.
You dismantled a sky
...