for Leicester Kyle

1
Contractor Henry Walker Eltin will take over coal extraction at Solid Energy's Stockton Opencast Mine in Buller from 1st June under an agreement reached by the two companies today. Solid Energy and Henry Walker Eltin have also agreed to actively work together to develop new opencast mines on the Buller Plateau, including the Upper Waimangaroa and Millerton reserves.

Naturally the sun

glances like a stone
skipping across the surface of the surface (now now no)

things being other than they appear. 
That darkness in the blackbird's gullet 

oozes with the mud of this track 
through noon. In Millerton the wind is aimless as our Sunday 

stroll. Head thrown
back, your eyes mine coal from a remote pit: black on black. 

Embarrassed by the kid inside you with the skinned knee, 
by a moment's memorial boredom, the light

wraps around your ankles, tripping you; your arm 
wraps around her waist 

tighter than old man's beard around a rose (I know). 
Hesitant yet eager, an adolescent's hands 

against an old lecher's irreverence, his prospects 
slender as the reeds

bending by Narcissus' pool. Of course her hips
curl like a snake

evading your stick; her voice (let go)
falls towards the sea. 'Betrayed' too strong

you opt for 'compromised' when the blackbird 
swoops to protect its nest. You have no patience 

with anything (I feel nothing bro)
except emergencies.
 

2
By the end of November, when it takes over stripping of the overburden, Henry Walker Eltin will employ 65 people on the site. Solid Energy will continue to operate the aerial ropeway and directly employ 51 people in the Buller area.

The best wedding present is clearly the electric blanket
- how considerate of Rita and Ted, how knowing -

yet your sweat trickles over the air where her nipples used to stand.
Come up and see me; make me smile. I'll do what you want

you promise the sun, burning the ears of neighbours
who remember her as a burnished schoolgirl

eager to slip from her uniform, to wriggle in her slip
for you - or was it the thought of you? Perhaps

she sang for her self, daydreaming a luminous beach
where Jeff Buckley, Dennis Wilson and Jim Farrell splashed her like brothers? 

You are her marble-cutter, screwing up
the face she once polished with kisses: This is not a relationship

it's a monument. Her laughter echoes through the square where confetti
falls before 'the happy couple' forget their pursuit

because the horizon retreats like desire, because
'because' is all God offers - apart from an electric blanket.
 

3
The aerial ropeway, which transports coal from the mine on the Stockton plateau to Solid Energy's rail terminal on the coast, north of Westport at Ngakawau, is being shortened from 7.7km to 2.2km to improve efficiency. The ropeway was shut down on 1st May for the new system to be commissioned and operational from the beginning of June. From then coal will be trucked from the mine to a new depot near Millerton and loaded into the aerial ropeway's buckets for transport to Ngakawau.

Voyeur, you are poised with tweezers
like a watchmaker. There is time.

'Return the daughter to her mother,
the moon to the sun. Come with us.'

Still she sleeps under the date
like a scorpion under a sundial. 

Your mother-in-law a tombstone, you
offer flowers: they are sticky 

as the blood on her daughter's groin.
Your smile is smooth as Charon's oar-hole.

Wasted because the light is off, 
your pseudo-distracted look as she

unbuttons to suckle the baby.
If she could see she would see

your face is hard like a dial 
holding the sun to ransom at noon.
 

4
Henry Walker Eltin Chief Executive Officer, Richard Ryan, said: 'The company is looking forward to working with Solid Energy and the Stockton workforce and to becoming an active member of the Westport community.'

While singing Bob Marley to the Pakeha moon she reads 
Tarot cards for Ngakawau housewives. Later she waits 

in her Sunday best to be undressed by their husbands. 
Her bastard dances with his father's shadow 

by the spa where, over the long weekend, an opossum bloats. 
As the boy's Christian name 

lapses into disbelief she repeats the names of others 
black and blue across woven envelopes.