Thursday, May 4, 2017

poem from takayna/Tarkine TAS

the "house tree" - a myrtle
I read this poem at Poetry Live in Auckland on Tuesday night, at the Thirsty Dog in Karangahape Rd. A great night, I was very impressed with the standard of NZ poetry.


Frankland River forest - FR41A & B*

It was war
and the giants fell
despatched by a scadgett,
take this coupe and make of it
a timber soup says the Forestry,
so a yellow machine
with a saw and a claw
tracks its way to 41A,
and the man inside
with a job and a plan
cuts the elders and shoves them, 
they’re pushovers,
claws them into a pile,
the ‘log landing’.

Then the leaves leave
the birds go
the marsupials go
and what was it I heard last night
from the snugness of my tent?
voice high in a tree,
a faint reply further out,
all these creatures go
but where is their refuge?

Horizontal now, the Tarkine giants
are a cracking bleaching abandoned
tumble jumble, 
with a rubbish pile of bones high at the back,
in the middle of a forest where few set foot,
not since it was called “takayna”.

Are we the last to have Tarkined here
shouting as we swam in the freezing Frankland River,
skipping stones or glimpsing
a brook trout flee across
the shallow pebble bed?
the last to watch the wedge-tailed eagles
soar above a pebble picnic
where we drank cocoa
and fed out souls
through our very pores?

*FR41A & B are the names of the coupes that are due to be logged - again. 
leatherwood blossom


Support the campaign to stop this reprehensible vandalism of our heritage. See http://www.bobbrown.org.au/ for further information, and beautiful images of takayna /Tarkine.  



purple berry seen near Frankland