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Friday 12 August 2016

Jean Allen is 'Lifted by Words'


Sound/speech/silence – what we hear; what we say; what we think … the sounds of the earth, the sea and sky. Language lifts man or destroys him. In periods or stages of my writing years my soul goes through playing with words, with ideas.

Last week we took ourselves to Parakai where the mineral waters are harnessed for spas. I have been taking ‘time out’ at Parakai since my mother introduced me to those healing water in my teenage years. As a young man my father had laboured on the laying of the Council mineral pool foundations. I returned once, in my early twenties to stay at the old hotel, where we ran the water for our own baths. Over the years Parakai and the hugeness of the Kaipara harbour, where Dad plied his launch and barge carting business, the high clear skies and the huge harbour waters have called me. These river/harbour places between Dargaville and Helensville are my waterway roots, my birth, my whakapapa.

Nowadays I live across country, on the east coast. It takes me forty minutes of easy driving through farmlands and small settlements to reach Helensville … another four or five to Parakai … and about another twenty-five minutes to Shelly Beach, my other favourite place.

 

from

glass city

to

country grass

is

thirty

minutes

spring grows

in

punga groves

in

peace paddocks

under

August

Skies

 

This is Jean  ‘Angel’ Allen tired of the rain but loving the lambs in this New Zealand spring weather.

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