Exit Bardo

Soft summer, a white butterfly
In lavender, blue sky through glass,
Manuka framing English lawn,

You remember. Every scene there
Was a miscellany tossing
Native and invasive species,

Tuis and fantails on a walk
That dawn with a startled hedgehog
Caught crossing the path to the lawn,

Afternoon and the honeybees
In lavender and manuka,
An almost industrial hum,

While you sat out endeavoring
To do nothing. Evening driving
Out to visit a local stream,

A thread of water cut so far
Down into its narrow chasm,
An able-bodied person could

Leap the gap where the waterfall
Tumbled several body lengths
Down under the tussocky field.

You stood on the wooden footbridge
And contemplated falling in,
Then drove back to the sod-roofed house

To stay up all night, the whole night,
Clear through to a rainy morning,
Anniversary of the death

Of a friend, afterlife reduced
To a chimeric paradise
Of ghosts haunted by invasions.