Mist on Koputaroa Road
At 80 k.p.h
I tunnel through white,
part feathers of mist
on the grey skin of road,
shout in awe. My voice
echoes between windows, doors
and written tributes litter the roadside
silent as empty nets.
Elders who woke in cloud
near waterways bending through rivers of flax
named the land in praise
of mornings like this:
as if the albatross from journeys told
slept here as they slept
and is rising from the swamp
towards the high country in the east,
its lifting breast,
its beauty
snared for generations
calling: Koputaroa.
note:
Koputaroa, originally kopu-ou-taroa = breast of an albatross
