The sheep on One Tree Hill
are really most companionable
don’t scurry away
listen
to what I say
with tolerance.
One can forgive
what passes through
the other end
as we chat.
It’s just their style.
Mind, these are upper class sheep
no quarter acre for them.
Plentiful grass
large spreading oaks for shelter.
No doggies dashing
helter skelter.
And well presented.
No daggy foot rot woollies these
not where tourists pass by
dispensing fervent admiration
leading to a sheepish
fluency in languages
especially Japanese.
But perhaps they are
a little overconfident.
Why the other day when I decided on
a cream tea at the café
it was full of ewes
no room for me.
There they all were delicately slurping
from bone china cups.
But of course with freedom
comes responsibility.
We’re bound to see them standing
for parliament quite soon.
‘Would the member for One Tree Hill
kindly not poop on the carpet.’
Or cries of ‘put them out to grass.
Too much woolly thinking.’
etc.
(c) Helen McKinlay
These lines were indeed inspired by the sheep on One Tree Hill (an ancient volcano) in Auckland within a baah’s closeness to the city. Last year on a long sojourn in Auckland, I spent many happy hours walking in the hills there where people run, walk, push prams admire lambs and talk to the sheep. I love it that even though there is a reasonably busy road through this area, the sheep run the show. Traffic is held up by mother sheep arguing with recalcitrant teenage lambs who skit across the tarmac without care. And of course tourists from sheepless nations adore them. For more about One Tree Hill and it’s fascinating history, see here.
I took the above photo last Spring. all was green and lush…but last week when I walked here…puffed actually…it was so hot and brown! No sheep no grass. However a friend who prefers to remain anon has just sent me the photos below, taken today. Hopefully after the drought has broken, Note the few patches of green! It’s been a wonderful summer for most of us here in NZ. But flying back to the South Island over a brown North and a stark and brown Mount Taranaki makes one appreciate how lucky we are here in our usually green NZ.
Have a happy week and do read Penelope Cottier’s hub page edit back at Tuesday Poem …featuring a poem by Hal Judge…a poet ‘willing to take risks.’
