Poetry

Rena

Listing on the Astrolabe reef,
she pours oil into the Bay of Plenty.
Cracked and breaking up.

Her spilt fuel settles on beaches.
There are dead and dying fish.
A seal is coated in a slick.

Black-cauled penguins,
cormorants, petrels, fairy terns
preen oil, feed oil to chicks.

Helicopters buzz around her bulk.
On deck containers slide,
a fracturing Rubik's cube. 

Hazard drifts ashore:
primary colours bright
against the grey-green coast.

Jenny Donnison