A STREET APART
Plush café
where the furniture
travels between
the natural wood
to the black leather
hosting middle class
professional peoples
dining to the view
of Queen street Auckland
across the road
Auckland Town Hall
stares back
safe and secure
protected from the outside
our haven away from home.
Yet to our left
Airdale street
leads away
to another world
Aotea Chapel
with its
stainglass windows
for the poor
of this city
where City Mission
is a way of life
whose community
of beneficiaries, alcoholics,
burnt out druggies,
mental health clients,
physically and sexually abused,
old people to street kids
human beings
that time and society
has conveniently forgotten.
Every morning
for breakfast
two extremes
of our society
coexist in a
face off
one frequents MLC
while the other dines
at the local city mission
only a street apart
yet a chasm
where stars,
planets, and universes
would not fill
this emptiness
between the Haves
and the Have Nots
the poor
and the rich
the powerful
and the powerless
the undeserving
and the privileged
the cultured
and the uncultured.
Where
words abound
but deeds
die silent deaths
condemning us all
to that state
of purgatory
where non reality
is hell
though the poor
tell me
when they die
here in Hell
they will go to
Heaven.
TUVALU
There are
islands
never far
from our hearts
but deeply embedded
in the
genetically encoded
tapa imprinted
being
of our existence
where
treasured ancestors
guard
eternity and our humanity
forever mindful
that our islands
are never alone
and never forgotten
Tuvalu
[written for Rev Tafue from Tuvalu speaking on Climate Change]
