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Photography: Sarah Reed
Marie Cameron

Marie Cameron began writing poetry in her sixties. She decided to start short and simple and work up but ten years on her poems have become even shorter. Marie's work has appeared in several New Zealand anthologies and in both Australian and New Zealand poetry magazines. She lives in Beachlands on Auckland's south eastern coast.


Emily Refuses


Because the sea rolls green
before the wind I surf the
clouds for Emily Bronte

hoping to share the emptiness

but as always
the message comes back

'Emily refuses'





everything hangs


on those four cows watching me
over the fence

on the nest the sparrows build
in this sweet-smelling pepper tree

on our boychild I rock
in his pram





dirty work


On such a grey day I see
the cock sparrow feeding the
half-grown nestling

as a paedophile
playing fast and loose with
a perky piece of tail

and the white feather in each
of the young sparrow's wings

as the dirty work of the
lone cock finch






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