University of Northern Iowa

May on the Wintered-Over GroundAuthor(s): Richard RobbinsSource: The North American Review, Vol. 272, No. 1 (Mar., 1987), p. 10Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25124805 .

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with a Whitewater guide for the

Rangitaiki River. Must be my pro nunciation, but he gives me the name

of Max Grant who makes plastic canoes in Palmerston North and is

president of the Ruahine white water

club, opposite end of the island. Max tells me that Bill Ross, the milkman in Mt. Monganui, will be very help ful if he can get off work. Barbara and

Barry Anderson will supply the

kayaks if I know at all what I'm

doing. Their specialty is four-day outings for groups on any river worth

riding. They supply the transporta tion, boats, food?she makes a bis

cuit-type thing with rolled oats and

nuts, for energy, mostly dehydrated fare. "All the tucker," as she puts it, "and a bit of tuition." You bring a

good woolly jersey. But if I am to make my 9:30 flight

out of Aukland, we can't figure out a

way to fit in there, back, down the

river, and to the airport. The weather

is perfect. Bill suggests the beach and a longer stay next time. I'm disap

pointed, but I can accept reality, I

say. He says, "They go together don't they?" The day on Waihi Beach is a stroke of luck. Almost deserted in

February, it rivals any tropical beach,

without the crowds. Extending almost five miles between two vol canic peaks, the caramel colored sand

is strung with a necklace of shells. To the right you see the peaks of Mata kana Island and straight ahead Mayor Island rises like a camel's back. One old beachcomber complete with sag ging belly stops to draw maps in the sand for me with his walking stick.

He rummages his way along the leav

ings of the sea to find a set of false teeth the surf knocked out of some

one's mouth yesterday. "They get washed up you know. Used to keep a

store in town and never was a time

without at least four dentures in the drawer." He mixes in shark stories

with accounts of his fishing prowess. He tells me all about the money prize Zane Grey set up for the biggest yellow fin (he thinks it is), maybe swordfish, caught off Mayor Island, 22 miles out. Over here's White Island?he rearranges his dot in the

geography and trails imaginary lava out of its center. He erases two lines

with his big toe to make Tauranga Harbor narrower. "Right here," he

digs his stick in, "we just lost a fel low. Tipped his boat and drowned."

I take his picture: that need to

keep something you can't, to wind a

place's beliefs, vagaries, possibilities 'round and around you until when

you finally must let go, it will pull your memories back to it like a yo-yo.

With my towel spread next to my clothes, I line up the fist-sized

whelks beside one starfish and the heart shaped cockles. Enough for

everyone who isn't here.

Actually, my entire brief exposure to the North Island of New Zealand leaves me with the impression of the

people being somewhere else. When I flew into Aukland from Sydney on

Saturday night, the bellboy at the

Regent had to draw a map on the blotter paper of my desk to direct me to an open eatery. The hotel kitchens closed at 10:00. He wondered if I had ever seen Hennepin Avenue in Min

neapolis, where he had gone for a summer as a

missionary (I'm not

making this up) for the Mormon Church! Queen Street looks like the main drag. Every second shop sells

sheepskin seat covers. In one win

dow with an array of collectibles, there hangs a greenstone tiki (tal isman) in the common form of a fetus. You wear it around your neck

for good luck, a charm you feel cer

tain will come to mean something more to you. Teenagers swarm up and down the avenue to and from the harbor. They lean against parked cars the way their counterparts do in Elk

hart, Indiana on a cruising Saturday.

Up a side street Cheers glares in neon, a bright Americanesque watering hole that serves peach daiquiris, homemade rolls with whipped but ter, and cold pates with baked

potatoes. The waiter has a hand

somely chiseled face and an earring in one ear. He doesn't comment on my accent. It must be 10:00 Sydney time, midnight here, ? o'clock at

home. I've lost track.

A two day stopover anyplace is like heading for the Grand Canyon and only making it as far as the fire

works stand. Dazzling, the particu lars of pyrotechnics, but . . . You

read the travel books when you get home like a kick in the pants. You

place your souvenirs like stations on the road to worlds to come?a shell

for the intricate whorls of experience you will one day wind through, a matchbook to ignite the flavors of one

fragrant fish house, those teeth, a

laugh each time you open your drawer, at a world too big to bite off all at once.

RICHARD ROBBINS

MAY ON THE WINTERED-OVER GROUND

Automatic as the amen of chard

gone rhubarb-red to seed, I again sit

and again feel for the easing of knots

I bound myself with without my knowing. Amen to the small death strokes inside, to their minority, to my more-than

50-percent wanting to flourish

despite the strain easing more slowly now,

slow as whole days. On my knees in the garden,

I tear second-generation weeds from root

and willing earth. On the dark, unsure ground where spirit grows its wheat, I kneel slowly down. Stars do not come out inside the chest.

Work, love, song are the sound of the chemical

hoe and nighttime angel moving hill

to small spinach hill, preparing my yield.

10 March 1987

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