There's a woman in the mirror
hanging on my bathroom wall.
She's tending to her eyes
by the winter morning's call.

And from the corner of my eye
I catch a posed reflection
that's as honey-dripping beautiful
as any recollection.

She's just popped in
with the milk that
she had borrowed.

She didn't stop
she didn't stay
and when our eyes met,
she looked away.

She knows she's beautiful.
Ah, such face and flesh!
Demure,
eyes cast down
beneath the golden glow
of the new moon
on the pavement
leading into town.

Her eyelashes cast shadows
upon the unwary,
chains on the neck of wolves
who tonight know she is beautiful
in face and flesh.

And the wolf whistles
will be her anthem
as she mounts the dais.
She will win the parade for sure,
she knows,
but sometimes she wonders
at the value of the prize

Her dark eyes plead from their inner depths;
a kidnapped heart gives voice
to her quiet cry.

These years carve a silent chasm
where the night-time steals the day
away from her hands.

But the heartbeat of a long love
rusts the iron bars of time and
slowly turns the key.

From the shards of a broken heart,
the strength of a promise kept
unleashes her smile.

From the shadows of my imagination,
from the miles on the road,
I saw her again.

I came looking for love,
you came panning for gold;
we were up the Moonlight Valley
where the rivers meet
and miner's stories are told
beneath the watchful eye of the Rimu
and the waters that run cold.

Down past the school,
beside the ribbon road,
the tattoed woodturner
sat at market there.
He'd been to Nelson once,
intended to sell his wares,
but got drunk with his mates
them came on back down here.

You came looking for love
I came in search of gold,
bedding down at the Hilton,
Main Street, Blackball,
down the road from Roa
where the rhododendrons
kick-start the green hills into life;
fire up the bush-clad vallery
over coal seams stripped bare
with miner's pick and dynamite.

We're mining for the mother lode,
we've been doing it a while;
a labour of love fuelled with
red wine and miner's ale
until the fire burns low in the hearth,
until the talking is all done,
until the truth is lost in the telling of the tale,
until the lateness of the hour brings about a sigh
and the chuckling rain on the iron roof
bids us all good bye.

On a rugged coast on a wild night,
a million stars known by name
spread a train of soundless worship
that drowned the spit and hiss
of wheels snaking
north and south beside us.

There was time here aplenty
beside the billy boiling
and the pridding of the flames,
the placing of castaway twigs
from the beach,
the milk and the coffee,
the last suppoer spread
on a carpet of stones.

In the pounding surf we
braced ourselves
against the surge and pull
of great phosphorous waves
from the ocean,
crashing luminous
against our bodies, alert
to the chill of the darkness
draped about our soldiers
in act of gallantry.

And about our shoulders
we pulled the covers
and cocooned one to the other
alive to the craessing breeze,
touching joy that skims like flat stones
across smooth waters
running deep beneath shooting stars.

Surrender at last,
the creeping bliss of welcome sleep.
Is this not the stuff of live,
cherished far above the destination,
fuelled by the travelling
and the dream that this be ours
and ours alone for just a time as this?
We ask of it nothing more
and yield it nothing less.