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Best Poems Written by Craig Bowden

Below are the all-time best Craig Bowden poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Ladder Bay

I come to this little cove often -
 no work, I have time to burn.
See Asians plunder its foreshore,
 I still fish - show 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 know the swallows smirk at me,
 my appearance they detest.
I cast my line and ignore them
(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

                ———

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.

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The Kauri Tree

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

                   ———

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.

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Rangitoto College

     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.
       Fibrolite
                prefab,
     bunson burner, 
            science lab.
       Trampoline,
             gym rope,
     girls flirt, 
            boys hope!


       Written: 1992

             ———

     I attended “Rangi” 
        1974 ~ 1977.

Details | Craig Bowden Poem

Chatham Ave

  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

               ———

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.

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For All Mankind

Beyond 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

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Elegy for the Northern Royal Albatross

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.

Details | Craig Bowden Poem

A Cry in the Night

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.

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Low Tide Browns Bay

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

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Letter to a Friend

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

Details | Craig Bowden Poem

Just Sayin

You’re hiding in the shadows,
 your voice is full of scorn,
your thoughts fragmented windows,
 your life a chess master’s pawn.

You think you know the answers,
 you very seldom concede,
you never accept the equation,
 you don’t notice when you bleed.

You laugh in the face of discretion,
 you constantly refuse advice,
you shut out the people you know,
 you roll their worth with dice.

You’re the solution to the problem,
 you’re the knife to the steel,
when will you finally understand
 your scars will never heal?

       
             

      Written: circa 1993