Hold your own hand
with your own hand
Hold it
See how confident
how knowing it feels
how held it feels
It will cross the road
with you
It will be your older brother
sister it will be your parent your lover
It says I’ve got you
relax now Walking Home gathers together some of the last poems written by Michele Amas. These are poems of tenacity and courage, and of locating oneself in time and in love. '"Teach me how to live I cried" goes a line in the poem "Walden Pond". In these sharp-witted, tender, at times heart-wrenching poems, Michele Amas shows us how.'—Jenny Bornholdt 'This is an astonishing book. Quiet, raw, physical, getting deep into the truth of things.' —Paula Green, NZ Poetry Shelf 'The excellent monologue “Morning Noon and Night” has an anxious wife telling her husband she’s not perfect. “Oestrogen Makes a Break for it on Thursday” is a wildly comical vignette of a mother running after a daughter who is developing too quickly. The centrepiece is the loose cycle in three parts, “The Tender Years”, which gradually becomes a reflection on Amas’ relationship with her own daughter. Then comes the sad part – the cycle “Walking Home”, where she confronts her cancer. “I want to read this disease / backwards / to get back to the top” she writes. But there was no going backwards, and going home meant something quite different.' —Nicholas Reid