5.
Why is it on the Waikato
all cattle seem to face one way?
The weather’s from the west, it’s true;
the rain, the wind. But then it may
be something more subliminal,
a vague awareness that they are,
for all the slowness of the grass,
converging on the abattoir.
9.
It’s nice to notice how the Māori
left the pressure of a name
on mountains, rivers, creeks and headlands.
The British could not do the same.
Sailing in a tad too late,
they found they had to be content
with generals and kilt nostalgia,
no longer meaning what they meant.
16.
The British knew that every swamp
was set there solely to be drained
and so their colonists ensured
that very few such sloughs remained.
At Mapua, the Mitchells found
that ‘wetland’ is a nicer name –
and so, with friends, they’ve slowly swapped
their dry flats for a swamp again.
19.
Beware road signage in New Zealand.
They make their poetry from it.
END WORKS threatens Armageddon.
Death’s more sudden with ICE/GRIT.
Less severe but still a worry
is that sign in mountain air,
five thousand feet above the ocean,
promising us SEAL REPAIR.
29.
We’re looking up your relatives,
Scots who came here via Peru
several generations back.
Your father’s in their faces too.
We’re talking over English tea,
the photographs and family names.
Who knows when we’ll meet up next?
Meanwhile, this friendship of the veins.