Lichen ochre
So when you’ve had enough a good way to go would
be have a Komatsu digger gobble
out a trench
in the tailings where the Ngahere dredge chewed
through, lie under a frost of rust-
-come-blood-come-
-plant you can’t describe, the perfect korowai
to cloak a body. Think
of it: buried
bones, as if your big black Labrador had pawed
a hole for a favourite
snack to
dig up
later. You’d really be back-to-
nature then, whatever the hell that means. Floods
like thunder
overhead, churning your bones
with sheep and cattle, rata stumps and glacial
gravel, split
off Mueller centuries
ago. You’d almost feel alive, like the river’s
brutish gut
could throw you up
for the Second Coming. I know a guy who’ll
drive the digger. All
we need now is for someone to
say “yes” and I’ll go down and talk to the river.
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