LEAVING

Another crew-cut daddy
wanders down to the
shore, hands
pocketing the
wind. Coming back with plastic
bikes and pulp helmets as another
cone drops to waste
its seed on the dried earth. Once Maori
owned this place. The elderly
kowhai fell, its base rotted away, little
green leaves hanging
on for days. Then
came the flash flood and the
shingle melted into new
forms. Stepping patterns
were formed by
loose driftwood; everybody
had long since left.

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