Yesterday, New Zealand marked two minutes silence for the 29 men who died in the Pike River mine explosion, at the commencement of a memorial service on the West Coast.<\/p>\n
Songs from the Sea<\/em> was written in memory of Rod Thornton, who also lived on the West Coast and died, aged 27, in a fall while mountain climbing. Given yesterday’s sense of loss and elegy, and the strength of the West Coast environment in the poem, it felt like the “right” post for today.<\/p>\n Songs from the sea sighing All their songs are sung for you, (c) Helen Lowe<\/p>\n \n Published in Yellow Moon <\/strong><\/em>17 <\/strong>(Australia) 2005.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday, New Zealand marked two minutes silence for the 29 men who died in the Pike River mine explosion, at the commencement of a memorial service on the West Coast. Songs from the Sea was written in memory of Rod Thornton, who also lived on the West Coast and died, aged 27, in a fall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2504"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2602,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504\/revisions\/2602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Songs from the Sea<\/h3>\n
\nin beneath the spindrift to the land’s
\ncurve, lying long beneath green bush
\nwhere the nikau palms stand sentinel
\nall along that shining margin
\nbetween sea and land, where the wind
\ngoes walking through the wild grasses
\nand sea birds glide, sailing the currents
\nof the air above shifting saltwater
\ntides, plaintive, melancholy, crying
\nto the wide and empty skies.<\/p>\n
\nsough of the wind and sigh of the sea
\nare your lullaby and your requiem
\nwhere you now lie, in the green earth
\nof this country you loved so well
\nthat in your passion to embrace it
\nyou leapt too high, like Icarus flying
\ninto the heart of fire, into the sun \u2013
\nand so fell, back into emptiness
\nbeneath the sky, where quiet now
\nin earth you lie.<\/p>\n