The Lost Moa Poem by C Richard Miles

No slick thaumaturgic trickery
Nor prestidigitator’s sleight-of-hand
May magic a moa’s egg anymore:
The graceful giant is long gone.

And though the Maori may muster
Sundry battered feathered headdresses
In tawdry tribal tourist museums
The majestic monarch is no more.

Not even in New Zealand now
With its living ossuary of fauna
That should long have been extinct
Will such a splendid bird be found.

But will it have to wait for long
Before its fellow relics join it?
And the Moa will not be unique
In its absence from the Southern scene.