Tāne’s footsteps echo above the rain,
demanding harmony from the orchestra,
as his feathered followers perform their rehearsed daybreak song.
All else is quiet on the lake-front;
the violence of last evening’s thunderstorm
has settled like a dewy memory upon the landscape.
Plans have been thrown into turmoil.
The lake is not co-operating –
there will be no hike today.
Scaling mountains can be less challenging than a debate with the patriarch,
and, I, too, sometimes choose water from the wrong spring.
Today this van, like your lake, holds me in.
Haumapuhia, great flailing taniwha,
when, defeated, you turned to stone,
was your heart the first to go?
(Winning poem, Grey District Library Poetry Day Competition, August 2015)
How Lake Waikeremona was formed: https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/2714/the-story-of-lake-waikaremoana
katrinaabrown 