Max I like these. Thanks. Chris Jones
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-----Original message-----
From: Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wed, 10 Aug 2011, 00:25:55 GMT+00:00
Subject: snap: 'pukeko legs'; also 'kiwi and pukeko'
Pukeko Legs
Legs! Years after his death,
my sister told me how Dad
behind my young back
liked to call me 'pukeko legs'.
Pukeko! the New Zealand swamp-hen
with orange stalk legs.
Said to my face,
it'd have turned me puce,
stalking squawking from the room.
Dad had an athlete's legs,
not that he kept that fit,
and a tiny beer belly
had showed up in his fifties -
one of his sensitivities.
Now I'm mid-seventies,
I can laugh about legs
and knobbly knees.
Back then, it was pain.
The Aussie swamp-hen
met fondly at the lake here
is a close cousin -
plumage shimmering
with purple iridescence
and legs to chuckle over.
Kiwi and Pukeko
Precisely what sort of country
chooses for its national bird
the Kiwi, dark-feathered,
flightless, nocturnal and shy?
Yet those New Zealanders
enjoy being called after the bird,
maybe because their footballers,
tireless, beefy, hard to beat,
are either All Blacks¹ or Kiwis.
But if you fancy any bird,
in New Zealand, your preferred
choice might be Pukekos, the beauties.
Scarlet beak, plumage an almost
iridescent indigo blue,
white tail and orange legs,
fearless, gregarious,
they stalk about the swamps on stilts,
fly for short distances only,
their take-off laboured, feet dangly,
crash-landing in the scrub or ti-tree.
I can identify with that!
Born a Kiwi, transplanted
to Australia, here I¹m enchanted
near lake and wetland to meet
the local swamp-hens, just like
the pukekos of my childhood.
A man called Holyoake who became
Prime Minister once in Wellington
was laughed at when he told the nation
Call me Kiwi. Nicknames can be unkind -
my schoolmates called me Spider -
now I invite you: call me Pukeko.
Max ('Spider') Richards
