Here in the wild, far from the gilt-edged security of the tinsel-town edges of colonial rape, the seasons are marked by the quality of light on evergreen leaves, by the nature of bird song and by the air's warmth or its lack.
Far from here, trees rooted in a well-forgotten dream of empire, display the now, stripped bare, while the stock that stayed behind bursts with leaf and bloom.
Opossums, deer, hedgehogs, rats, stoats, cattle and sheep, born out of the dead-land of an accustomed greed, tear away at the children of Tāne, silencing the song of the land, so that the sons and daughters of abusury may hearken only to the hollow song of guilt rattling their own gilded cages.
poet's bridge
light making light
of the other
