Cantabile

Emma Neale

The west harbour road

curved like an old scythe,

its blade rinsed the colour of thunder

by a passing sloop of rain.

Our bike wheels whirred:

four giant whisks spinning

inside the freshly decanted

bowl of sunlight

as its soft curd thickened

at the precise moment

a sooty shearwater

urged itself into an upwards arc

from a kelp-black rock:

it chanced flight across our path

towards a throng of macrocarpas

who bowed their heads, a green choir

sight-reading difficult sheet music

counting wide bars of silence

to usher in an invisible soloist

who broke open the bread of song

so even we became the grain of notes

goldening.

EMMA NEALE’S most recent poetry collection, Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit (Otago University Press, 2024), won the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for 2025. That year also saw her awarded the Janet Frame Prize.