Hunting And Gathering
I left the polished gallery
and looked to the winter hills
from their severe domain
heard art devoured
keen the spectrum of blue
ears shut mouth in fingers
I walked above bones
buried in earth
the voracious British thieved
I would never transcend grief
in that blighted city
not even in higher heels
but in the alley where I toyed
I found a playing card
the jolly three of hearts
I gave to a livid wound
back home in the bush
a tui rasped as I filed the notes
my body couldn't bear
and that night the woman
in the moon said the tyranny
of colonisation plays
on every frequency
a cacophony of grief
is love at its fiercest
denied too long
her voice was lighting
in mid air conversations
often burn
Leslie McKay writes haiku and prose poetry and her work is published in anthologies and journals on and off line. In 2016 she won the Caselberg International Poetry Prize. Originally from Christchurch, she has lived in the Maruia Valley a rich vein of lyricism, since the earthquakes.