I am a kauri snail kaitiaki look on my green spiral shell ye mighty and despair I admit I've eaten noke or native worm sushi but I am a hundred millimeters long and move at 0.013 m/s through the Whirinaki, the Tai Tokerau, Waitakere and Kaimai ranges to reside outside New World Gate Pā, Pak N Save Ruapekapeka, and the Ōhaeawai Four Square teaching our kids their history at 2am or thereabouts distributing udon noodles from the dumpsters so our kids can save the noke. I miss most my kauri trees with their big trunks that sing with the wind and admit they stretch taller than my tall tentacles. I tell the tamariki our whānau’s whakapapa goes for 200 million years beyond the Treaty of Waitangi and James Busby picked up our tūpuna in a tentacular blink twice giving us his surname, Paryphanta Busbyi Busbyi making it all about him. Aroha mai, sorry, I must eat and run.
From: Vol.09 N.01 – A Poetics of Rights
Pupurangi Shelley
by
Robert Sullivan