The Farmer

is slender as rye. In a breeze,

her head flutters.

Sometimes she flaps and squawks

but she is earthbound like us.

Her foot falls to the ground

our hooves tread,

her mouth eats from the grass

we nourish,

her bones

rest in the soil.

Janet Newman is a poet, editor and farmer from Horowhenua. Her collection, Unseasoned campaigner (Otago University Press, 2021), won the 2022 NZSA Heritage Book Award for Poetry. She is an editor of Koe: An Aotearoa ecopoetry anthology (OUP, 2024).