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Owen Leeming, 1982, in his Provençal village house, working on his second novel in French.
Owen Leeming, 1982, in his Provençal village house, working on his second novel in French.
The Dream Cave
The Dream Cave, a poem written during New Zealand's 2020 Covid-19 lockdown by 1970 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow, Owen Leeming.
Nelson sun, sea, bush, sand,
diamond-starred water, gannet lullaby,
a small boy, by pointed cave mouth,
black store of genitor love, asleep,
fist uncurled, hardly breathing.
Might he be wandering free
in a sky of everything,
of princely dominion, of quilted peace,
with Max and the Maxi Monsters,
a frisk of unicorn foals, a swirl
of silver herons. There he lies encradled,
gloved by the transparent breeze.
An artist’s scene of brightness,
infant, and triangular maw of dark --
benign entrance to the riddle of our selves,
features both known and strange, all smiling –
as we smile at the child’s still face,
at the look of what we have been,
before we grew and knew.