Wonderful To Relate

my brother leaves a message    call me
something has happened    is it an emergency
or terra incognita waving about in the trees
closer than anyone imagined    a daughter
he says when I call him back    I have a daughter
and she is twenty-seven years old

this takes a bit of explaining    and when
he has I ask is there a photo    did you take
some photos    the files arrive as we talk
I open them and there she is    someone
who looks like all of us    and is most surely
herself    the stranger who is his daughter
our niece    and now eldest of five cousins
it takes a long time to work out
the delicate shapes that might be    and when
it is done    she comes to meet us
more photos more talk    we have given her
our grandmother’s rings    she gives us
the gift of herself    if we will have her

that part is easy    and now there’s
a wedding in the air    they will tie the knot
with his people and we will travel again
to Te Matau a Maui    this time
with everyone on board    and in a vineyard
at the far end of summer    with strangers
who have made us welcome    my brother
will give away his daughter    knowing
she has made us into something bigger
and more precious than anyone
could have imagined    she is herself
and she is one of us    for her
we will travel the miles to Haumoana
looking at the windy sea    thinking about
long ago family weddings and how this one
is adding its quota of surprises
and serendipity to the story we thought
we knew    mirabile dictu we say
wiping away a sneaky tear    such wonders
and everybody talking    we are here
with a million champagne bubbles
bursting miraculously against our lips
wish us well    we are going to a wedding

(c) Michele Leggott

Published in Mirabile Dictu (Auckalnd University Press) 2009

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About the Poem

Michele Leggott’s Mirabile Dictu was one of my favourite poetry collections from last year and this poem, which is not the title poem, but close—its title a translation of the book title—is one of my favourites from the collection. Often within a collection, and often found near the end of the manuscript, will be a poem that you feel, as a reader, in some way encapsulates the whole or acts as a key to unlock it. For me, wonderful to relate is that key: a poem of wonders in a collection of wonderful poetry.

wonderful to relate has also been featured by for their distributed in both New Zealand and the USA.

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About Michele Leggott:

Michele Leggott is a Professor of English at The University of Auckland, an award-winning poet, literary scholar and the founding director of the NZ Electronic Poetry Centre. For more about Michele and Mirabile Dictu visit here (& scroll down.)

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