Four Poems

Moa

The first Maori waka arrived
at a pastoral kitchen,

stocked with moa
roaming on giant drumsticks,

named by the settlers
'chicken' which is

to say, meat.
They moved as slowly

as a crowd, and loudly
as a feast,

which is what, after all,
they were.

Those pastoral days
when we walked

with our dinner,
two legs by two,

if we had not got along
so well, may well

have lasted
longer.
...