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title
Issue # 3 January 2011
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Bio


Middle-aged and mildly neurotic, Laurice has been re-arranging words since 1994, after attending art school in a misguided and unsuccessful attempt to ward off a mid-life crisis. She's earned money from at least six poems and several competitions, and has managed her emotional life without illegal self-medication, despite a brief stint as a life model. Early retirement enabled her to rise from committee member of the New Zealand Poetry Society to National Coordinator in charge of everything. Election to President occurred when no-one else wanted the job. Four adult children are proud of her achievements, her husband merely bemused.


Laurice Gilbert


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Abseiling At the Ellice St Quarry

Turning my back on the light year
separating me from the city,

I let my feet find the wall
- walking as a spider walks -

suspended by ropes I can only hope
are stronger than gravity.

Things with wings rocket from bushes
that have no right to grow

so far from the security
of a horizontal plane.

A century flashes by
and I'm back in Wellington,

sustained once more by her skyline,
smiling the width of a galaxy.