Poetry Shelf Monday Poem

By Poetry Shelf - Paula Green | Posted: Monday Dec 08, 2025

Paranormal Phenomenon by Richard Reeve

Poetry Shelf Monday Poem: Paranormal Phenomenon by Richard Reeve | NZ Poetry Shelf

Paranormal Phenomenon

My garden’s gum tree, creaking above my roof,
is nearly normal. By which I mean
the sound branches make when hit by weather,
rain, wind and the like, whinge of the limbs
bending to a gale, drizzle, or stillness
when the nut flowers bring in the bees.
All this is normal, scarcely worth commentary,

and yet, also, mysterious.

99 percent of all paranormal phenomena involve sticks,
shufflings in the wind, storms, shadows.
Sound or form first associated, then disassociated,
inflating superstition. The fact of weather.
99 percent of such occurrences being quietly remarkable,
the sound of the gum is quietly remarkable
(the one percent a mere statistic).

Richard Reeve

Richard Reeve is the author of seven collections of poetry, published variously by Auckland University Press, Otago University Press and Maungatua Press. His most recent publication, About Now, was published by Maungatua Press in 2024. A new collection is forthcoming. Reeve lives at Warrington, to the north of Dunedin, with his partner Octavia, cat Lionel, some hedgehogs, a selection of introduced bird species and a few mice.