Listen to poem:
New Zealand Pastoral
Once upon a budding arcadian green
a last veil winter hoar melts on the bud -
Romney low country lambs fattened to wean
chew in flocks upon the ruminant cud.
In the tea trees to the whistling song thrush
I alone hear that first September dawn,
and outside beyond ryegrass, fern and rush
glisten woolly coats of sheep early shorn.
Oh to feel again its warm gentle breeze
on greensward and dryads in the gnarled trees.
But upon the altar of this season’s new day
so a spring offering is born a prey.
In stone moss stream, wild aromatic grass,
the sleeping flower does the sun invite
but an ancient blood moon shall come to pass
on the shadows of day and dark of night.
Soon the muster will shatter a false peace
in cornucopia of herd and bloom -
nigh the yard gates will fill with milky fleece
and only finest wool spin on the loom.
Oh to feel again its warm gentle breeze
on greensward and dryads in the gnarled trees.
But upon the altar of this season’s new day
so a spring offering is born a prey.
Smell the petrichor and jade scented hedge,
the lambs, the honeybees in pollen’s net -
that botany of sights and sounds and fledge
of young and new moonrise to moonset.
The morepork on night hunt moonlit prowl
casts its eye and spreads its speckled wing -
and in the mists see swamphens and waterfowl
rise again the prismatic dawn of spring.
Written: August 1989
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