The Picnic by Sarah Jane Barnett

We climbed up the gorge once,
to Samuel Butler’s hut, which happened
to be a memorial plaque set
in dense gorse.

Yellow flowers on a khaki hill.

It is a story you embellish in company—
add the sighting
of a Tarr, his quiet black face
rotated in slow motion; the picnic

where we laid
goats cheese, apples and sweet sultanas
on a home-spun jersey
that you still wear,

or the encounter with a skink, skin wrapped
around his skeleton, which
when you reached out
slipped into the rock.

Published in The Brief, 2010. Used with the permission of the writer.

About Sarah
Sarah Jane Barnett is a writer who lives in Wellington. Her work has appeared in a range of literary journals such as Landfall, Sport and The New Zealand Listener, and on the e-zines Snorkel and Turbine.

Her poem, The Drop Distance, was selected for Best New Zealand Poems 2007. She is currently completing a creative PhD in ecopoetics. You can find out more about her on her website.