Max thanks reminds me of the Oxford Pitt-Rivers Museum where some-one
tidying up threw out onto
A bonfire their only stuffed Dodo (doesn't pay to be tidy!)
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Max Richards
Sent: 12 March 2014 01:08
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: 'Pouakai - Haast's Eagle'
New Zealand birds? I've known
a few - alive - the kiwi;
extinct - the upright moa;
both flightless, emblematic.
The kea - notorious thief,
the mutton-bird, the more-
pork; fan-tail, tui
(once called parson-bird).
But (kept from me
till late in life, at home
passive with tv) - Haast's
eagle! - Pouakai -
in company with David
Attenborough
and a moa
resurrected by night
in the Museum of
Natural History!
A few bones, a lot
of special effects -
look out! Haast's eagle
swoops low at us
and veers off to almost
catch the moa!
They say the Maori
hunted down the moa -
to extinction -
at which the eagle
likewise vanished.
The human need
for protein was maybe
the force responsible.
Maori? well, they fell back
on smaller birds, fish,
and the occasional
captured enemy.
In my mind's eye
I see Haast's
unlucky last
swoop to clutch
(for lack of a moa)
a plump Maori child;
Pouakai they hunted
past death into legend.
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