Pohutukawa Summer

watch me swing free wanton pohutukawa needles and sunshine blossoms in my loose curls

dark green leaves filled with furious bees and mosquitos menacing like pinscratches

above a bay so blue I can see it reflected in the cerulean sky and diamonds

dance along its edges like shards of an imperfect mirror impelled into

watercolor shadows that gather their long dresses in their hands

leaving footprints and making sandcastles out of driftwood

slithering like molten seaweed across the beach

and into the flowing crimson death throes

of a ruined sky and the multicolored

half-fragmented sunset

on the last full day

of a perfect

summer.