CHALK WHITE AMONG THE SPLINTERED SHELLS Bare, like the deer forests in the hills, The logs shiver in the river's flow And here a small boy cries his joy Amidst the water-smooth rocks and stones That frame Rakaia's slow scuttle to the sea. Lost lamb bleating on the Plain And small boy crying his joy Kicking at the cluster of moa-bones And fragments of the moa-hunter's thigh Chalk-white among the splintered shells Of ancient middens, hidden In the river's burndened soil. Over the bones of the dead And the shells that ring of the sea, A kotuku lies, wounded in the wing. That night the small boy dreams On a bed of feather boulders, Of chiselled thighs and swivelled shells And a moa bleating on the Plains. And still in dreams The lost lamb sleeps While the kotuku files south To the rain forests of Okarito.
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Te Ao Hou, September 1963, Page 15
Word Count
146CHALK WHITE AMONG THE SPLINTERED SHELLS Te Ao Hou, September 1963, Page 15
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The Secretary Maori Purposes Fund Board
C/- Te Puni Kokiri
PO Box 3943
WELLINGTON
Phone: (04) 922 6000
Email: MB-RPO-MPF@tpk.govt.nz