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Craig Bowden Poem
I come to this little cove often -
no work, I have time to burn.
Watch shellfish raiders plunder
the foreshore with no concern.
Red-bill seagulls fly in circles,
fight over scraps they have won.
Never giving a thought to Icarus
who flew too close to the sun.
Soon a woman wanders over
and asks me what I’ve caught.
I tell her “nothing yet” but “you’d
be a great catch” I thought.
I see the swallows smirk at me,
my appearance they detest.
But still I cast my line and fish
or at least I do my best.
Things start spinning in my head
like what it’s like to drown.
Did King Neptune sit on a throne
and did he wear a crown?
I come alone to this place often
to remember and reflect.
A place of beauty and meaning,
a place where I can forget.
Written: 1992
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Ladder Bay is a sheltered cove in
the northern beaches of Auckland
New Zealand not too far from my
home in the East Coast Bays.
Copyright © Craig Bowden | Year Posted 2022
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Craig Bowden Poem
Of course you’re fourteen years older
since the last time I saw you.
Your magnificent girth - dizzy height.
From your smallest roots (the size of a man’s thigh)
to your first branches that bees nested in -
your honey would have been the sweetest.
A man could build a house from this tree
my uncle told me. I believed him -
in fact, you could have built more.
I flew over you once in a helicopter,
you looked pathetically small,
but a fool was I in your towering shadow
thinking you were so.
Written: 1987
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Kauri trees are the biggest (in volume) tree
in New Zealand standing up to 50m tall.
This particular Kauri tree was on my mate’s
father’s farm which I would visit as a kid.
Copyright © Craig Bowden | Year Posted 2022
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Craig Bowden Poem
Like a dream unfolding
on this historic day
astronauts head skyward - heroes,
fools, call them what you may
The world watches in awe
its genesis where no man has been.
Strange land, a new beginning -
behold the lunar return to Eden
A cratered moon beckons,
this globe of reflected light -
Armstrong and Aldrin silently land,
Mike Collins considers his plight
Each man had their rituals
at this point in time.
Aldrin in silence broke the bread
and drank the holy wine
Now only bootprints remain
for some celestial traveller to find,
and a commemorative plaque that reads
“We came in peace for all mankind”
O’ moon, they walked over you -
revealed, you shine naked.
Your secrets exposed in the name of man...
Christ! Is nothing sacred?
Written: 1992
Copyright © Craig Bowden | Year Posted 2022
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Craig Bowden Poem
I walked down the track
in the afternoon,
ten years of memories
cut in too soon.
I started to sweat,
I had no room,
and overhead
a sonic boom.
It’s far too early
to ask the moon
just what the fu-ck
am I doing here.
We reminisce
a thousand times
of drinking, swimming,
blowing minds.
Meeting people,
friendships bind
sitting under
those massive pines.
Contemplating,
rehearsing lines
but can’t you see
I don’t want this?
Sure, I remember
the early days,
the barbecues,
the summer haze,
the rising tides
in mangrove bays -
constant laughter
and bloodshot gaze,
but I tell myself it
was just a phase...
and at thirty-three
I’m beyond that.
Written: 1993
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At the end of Chatham Ave lies a public reserve
or park on the shores of the upper Waitemata
Harbour in Paremoremo, just north of Auckland
in New Zealand. A time and place of no return.
Copyright © Craig Bowden | Year Posted 2022
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Craig Bowden Poem
Textbooks
chalk dust,
young men
full of lust.
School bus,
school bag,
mathematics,
what a drag!
Woodwork,
English lit,
some pass,
some quit.
Autumn leaf,
summer sun,
playin’ truant
on the run.
Asbestos
fibrolite prefab,
bunson burner,
science lab.
Trampoline,
tightrope,
girls flirt,
boys grope!
Written: 1992
———
I attended “Rangi”
1974 ~ 1977.
Copyright © Craig Bowden | Year Posted 2022
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Craig Bowden Poem
They called you Grandma -
matriarch of Taiaroa Head.
Your husband of seventeen years,
Blue-Green,
named after the colours of the bands
they placed around his leg.
For over sixty years you
returned to this windswept
piece of Otago coast to breed.
The surrounding sea
a golden harvest of fish
into which time and time again
you dove at sickening breakneck speed.
On clifftop nest your last chick,
Button, crying to be fed.
You fished your heart out on
ocean voyage yet
he not yet fledged lost weight,
but forever present the keen eye
and caring hands of Shirley Webb.
Most of your life was spent at sea -
a radius of continents -
Chatham Islands,
The Sisters, Hello friends!
As always gliding majestically.
Born in 1927, you died in 1989,
no doubt in some bastard
foreign driftnet or deep water longline.
Nylon can’t fly
nor fools heed the curse
of the Ancient Mariner’s Rime.
So glide on Grandma,
glide on your satin silver wings,
for great will be
forever your beauty
the memory of you brings -
three million miles flown lost at sea.
Written: 1991
*Grandma was lost at sea aged at least
62 years.
*She was at the time the oldest banded
breeding albatross recorded.
*Taiaroa Head is in Otago, New Zealand.
*Shirley Webb was a conservationist
and guide who lovingly looked after
the albatross breeding colony.
*As of October 2022 Button still returns
to Taiaroa Head to breed. He is 33 yo.
Copyright © Craig Bowden | Year Posted 2022
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Craig Bowden Poem
Old mooring pylon
with shag aloft,
wings flapping.
Fitness freaks with dogs
jog the shore -
one woman in particular,
her thighs slapping.
An old heron and I
are amused -
we fly away,
both of us clapping.
Written: circa 1993
Copyright © Craig Bowden | Year Posted 2022
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Craig Bowden Poem
You wake me nearly every night
with your incessant guttural cries.
Tell me what’s wrong and how
is it the spotted owl is so wise.
I think you wake me on purpose,
you eerily laugh at my expense.
I say stop this ridicule, stop this
high pitched shrieking nonsense.
Anyway who cares about some
ruffled wide-eyed morepork
that’s frightened by the light,
who eats things like rats and mice
on a dark starry moonlit night.
The native Maori call you ruru,
it’s true I smiled when I heard.
You don’t have coloured feathers -
a poor excuse for a bird.
So go and trouble someone else,
find another place to hide.
And forgive me like I forgive you,
let’s both swallow our pride.
Written: 1991
Moreporks are native
New Zealand owls.
Copyright © Craig Bowden | Year Posted 2022
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Craig Bowden Poem
I am sitting in my bedroom, Skeet,
the weather atrocious outside.
It is only in this room
where no one looks
that I can really hide.
And consider pleasures of yesteryear
or the days yet to come.
This is when I struggle
with what has happened
and the things I should have done.
Of course I know I will get no answers
to my bullsh*t bedroom blues.
But what is to become
of you and I my friend?
It fills my mind and haunts my muse.
Written: 1995
Copyright © Craig Bowden | Year Posted 2022
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Craig Bowden Poem
I have no doubt that soon
it will be summer.
The daffodils have taken flight,
fire no more warms the night.
The rain has gone,
no need to run for cover.
Not long now ‘til summer,
blossoms on apple trees,
monarch butterflies and bumble bees,
garden buds a kaleidoscope in flower
with fruit upon vine and bower.
No need for winter clothes,
sore throats, chills, stuffy nose.
Children laugh, their face aglow,
(they’re in the know)
soon it will be summer.
I have a friend, we love cricket,
he bowls - I take wickets!
One ball left in the over,
a sweet drive through extra cover...
that’s when you know it’s summer.
We poke fun at each other,
who’s the best, he’s like a brother.
I never move my feet -
“your arm’s always bent, Skeet,”
but I think we can both agree
you’re no Sobers and I’m no Hadlee.
Written: circa 1995
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*Wicket refers to the dismissal
of a batsman.
*An over is made up of six balls
bowled by the bowler.
*A drive is a cricket shot.
*Extra cover is a fielding position.
*Skeet is my friend and opponent.
A legend in his own mind.
*Sobers and Hadlee are famous
players from the past.
Copyright © Craig Bowden | Year Posted 2022
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