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Kiriwhakapapa
We make our dairy in the river:
blue milk, cheese and salted butter
in plastic, curd in vacuum-pack.
We set them in the rocks and water
duck in under peeling fuchsia.
In these reaches, all is clear.
Wash in marble sun and shadow
brush our teeth in wind-shirred hollows
racing sticks and cardboard ships
with gravel ballast, tipping, flipping
down, the gorge skims to the farmer
whose country lies in the river.
Nicola Easthope’s first collection of poetry leaving my arms free to fly around you, was published by Steele Roberts in 2011. Her second manuscript, Working the Tang, is currently being iced and candled. Life would be a lot more stressful without Dilmah tea, rice milk, bananas and Brazil nuts.
