"Raroa Road" by Nina Mingya Powles
Full disclosure: I've taken to Google to search for the appearance of certain words in Taylor's songs. I like to think that I know her lyrics like the back of my hand (Better Man reference, anyone?), but sometimes it's hard to sort them all out or pull up the right one in the ol' brain rolodex. So, I have a Tumblr page that I stumbled upon to thank for this one.
The poem is set up in two parts - "flashback" and "echo." I was so thrown by the unique structure that I didn't catch the "Red" reference until scouring the web, "Remembering him comes in flashbacks and echos." 😮 Once that connection was made, it all seemed to fall into place. The poem mentions autumn, always associated with the Red album, and also describes the city as "moss green" and "tidal blue," which I believe also calls back to the colors mentioned in the song, "Losing him was blue like I've never known / Missing him was dark gray all alone."
I also searched to see if Raroa Road is an actual street, and it is a real street in New Zealand. I did another quick search to find that that poet is from New Zealand, so that was interesting! And just out of pure curiosity, I clicked through a street view of Raroa Road, and it's a lush green, winding road. I wondered if it was a "dead end street" as mentioned in the song, but it appears to continue in both directions with different names. However, it does look like a very enjoyable, drivable road, so maybe the poet thought of it with the first line of the song, "Loving him was like driving a new Maserati down a dead end street."
A random footnote: I also searched for "kaka and tui bells" as mentioned in the poem, but sadly, I was unable to figure out what they are. No traces of them on the internet! I'm assuming they might be specific to New Zealand? So, if anyone knows what they are and would like to share, I'm very interested!
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