Anticipating
the trip, I take
a mental tour
of an unseen landscape.
Fact:
84% of New Zealand flora
are endemic. Isolated
among volcanoes,
like an artist sketching
impossible petals,
the filaments and sepals
emerged and twined, transformed
into pōhutukawa,
the kiwi Christmas tree,
colonizer of lava fields;
rewarewa, the honeysuckle,
its nectar sweet and smokey;
and Tane Mahuta, oldest
and largest kauri tree,
stretching skyward even
before the first Maori set
foot upon the soil.
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Very nice, Holly – really gets across the flavor of how you see your trip – I like the last line especially, as if you were a Maori waiting to set foot. And you are! Jane