Or rather the ostrich, like the crocodile,
swallows hard stones such as quartz or granite
which jostle in the gizzard to assist
the slow work of digestion.
Such was the work required to mill
a wide diet of New Zealand vegetation
that the enormous moas
went miles in search of the right stones
which can be found beside their skeletons
or when the bones have long been broken down
as phantom tracts, as cairns to their extinction,
all immaculately polished and rounded.
