Snipe
(for but not to Colin Miskelly)
Snipe.
You can’t imagine one.
Frail echo of kiwi
handful of feathers
with a darning needle handle.
Snipe.
You’ve never seen one
on its nest of dracophyllum
under tussock
on a chilly island rock around the south.
Hakawai.
Horror of the empty night.
Monster or ghost
not even the elders knew for sure
and nobody wanted to know.
Hakawai.
The rare roar from nowhere
loud as a jumbo jet
skimming
the roof of the tent.
Snipe.
Aeronautical acrobat
secretly fizzing and whizzing
is the hakawai,
makes the hakawai.
Supersnipe
changing in a phone box
from trembling toy
to boy racer of the skies.
Snipe.
Wrecking its feathers
for a moment of fame or fun
for a sound a thousand thousand times
its size.
Photo: James Fraser, NZ Department of Conservation