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