Elver

He’s jawless,
looks like rubber,
his small scales
buried in skin.

He wants to swim
in the shallows
where the children play.

His mother disagrees.

On the night
of the great storm
he dived over a fence
of small rocks.

There the Waimak river
was flooded with dead eels.

Paige Bowman is thirteen years old and lives in Christchurch.