Tuesday Poem - 'A walk on the moor' by Harvey Molloy

A walk on the moor

The steep ascent

tugs my calf muscles

my camera eyes

survey the moorscape

as I approach

the soft arc of the ridge

I pitch then yaw

arms extended

to avoid a small pool

in the bracken

the wind bites against

the thermal insulation

of my Parka suit

but telemetry tells ground control

we are still go

& confirms a green light

somewhere beneath the peat

the graves of the children

Brady & Hindley murdered —

what were their names?

& why did she name her dog Puppet?

& what happened to Puppet

after she was sentenced to life?

I moonwalk hop

bounce from left foot to right

pretending to be light

to be free of the earth

my gloved hands collect

samples of heather

for detailed analysis later

in the bedroom laboratory

should I make it home.

I am trying to be sanguine and upbeat about the loss of the Tuesday Poem community – kicked off about 5 years ago by Mary McCallum and Claire Beynon. Things fall apart. But I am not ready to fall apart yet. I like having point and purpose to my reading. So I shall carry on until the wobble in my orbit becomes too plangent. And it is very fitting that my first pick for the new regime is Harvey Molloy, who was a valued member of that community. I bumped into Harvey at the poetry conference in Wellington, and we did the book swap thing, the thing that poets do. So I got to read Moonshot (Steele Roberts 2008) and I can see quite clearly why Mary McCallum has selected him for next year's 3 poet Hoopla series at Mākaro Press. The man has skillz. I particularly took to this poem, because it summons up such an ominous sense of place, as it celebrates the natural elevation of childhood.