The Kingfisher

My Year of Walking

There is this hill that lets you see the city as it wraps around you,
And I walked to the top of it over and over again trying to place myself
In this whole mess,
The dark hills to the west which gave birth to me,
The steel towers to the north,
Green islands to the south that climb above the tile roofs,
And I would walk down again knowing less than when I began.

There is this pedestrian bridge that crosses the motorway and I mean you can only walk across it
Because really the design of this bridge is not pedestrian at all but in fact quite stunning
And I stand on top of it and look up at the houses being built on the slopes of Mt Albert,
I look down to watch the traffic zoom beneath my feet,
I lean outwards and see ducks in the waterways that snake their way alongside the cars and trucks,
And I open my jacket which has trapped the heat of my body and the moisture too
Astride this river of steel and asphalt I feel like a god. 
A very small god.

When you walk down the creek that runs past the softball fields you come across these amazing structures, 
Some of which look like fishing baskets and some which are something else, 
Like the kind of curiosity you might find on your nana’s shelf
But made large enough to walk through and deposited in a grassy no-man’s land at the end of cul-de-sacs hidden by harakeke and abandoned shopping carts, 
And I would stop at some of them occasionally when the need took me and wonder if any of them was a public toilet,
By design I mean, 
Because obviously some of them were fulfilling that function regardless,
And this is a thing you don’t think about until you are walking, 
Not just for 10 minutes, or an hour, or a day, but for months on end,
You think about where the toilets are,
You think about water,
You think about the way home ,
You think about the small stones and the pattern they make on the ground and whether you will recognise them if you come this way again.

There are pieces of footpath that become familiar.
There are trees you recognise as though they were old friends
And there are those that you mourn when the weekend pruning has been particularly harsh,
There are fences which have messages scrawled across them by unknown hands
And you run your fingers along the wood hoping to pick up some sense of meaning, but catch only splinters

I think about the shortcuts, the secret paths that lead between houses, 
Down strips of reserve overgrown and green, 
Places where one should not be caught after dark, 
Where one should not walk alone,
But when one is a big man like me and your beard has grown wild you can walk down them alright
And you become comfortable with other people stepping out of your way or crossing the street,
And these secret paths reveal something more,
An inner life,
The domain of cats and strays,
Scars of another time and place and all the things we have built over.

Walking te Whau like a ghost (well I am very white) I think about these things.
I find a green dinosaur on the ground,
Not a real one of course, 
But a green plastic toy that has escaped the clutches of a child to fall from the pushchair.
It waits here under the pohutukawa listening to the virtuoso song of the tui, 
A show-off, who flitters in the branches above. 

I have aching feet because I have walked a long way. 
My heart aches too, not because of sadness but due to heart disease. 
No metaphors needed.

I walk to be surrounded by the world and because a doctor told me I must
But I find that the man on his feet lives on the margins in this city of cars and rust.

You want to go somewhere new in this town? 
You walk.
You see the city we forgot while we were busy in our offices and studios.
You cry a little for all of the lost souls that live in this greasy pre-cast concrete fast-food wrapper garden of modernity
And even so know more than you do.

I cry sometimes too, but not where anybody can see.
These tears are for me and the river.
We climb into each other, we meander past the houses and under motorways,
Rubbish swims on our sluggish current,
And we wonder together when anyone might notice.

When I get to the sea I turn around again,
I head back inland,
I head to the hill that lets me see the city wrap around me.