High Country Hymn Poem by Keith Shorrocks Johnson

High the mountains rise in spur and summit
Headed up to frozen tracts and recent snows
Clear to the blistering ice-blue sky
Ringing bluffs and cliffs and ragged flumes
Hard country gullies topped to waterfalls
Drop to native beech and sweet short pasture.

Into the easy country, the creeks are bound
By rubble walls spilled from tussock heights
Each fissure with its self-built stop-banks
Breaking through to foothill flats and meadows
And below the river laces braids with willows
Stilled to lakeside once among the poplar stands.