Still Life

Today, time just waits while people pause
and find a feeling.
The quake broke the clock,
timed all that was meant to be
and stopped intentions from fulfilling.

I speak without a voice;
despair: my vocal chords,
with no verbs, just sheer implosive emotion
eager to shout and save
in its scything silence,
echoing the sound of bone.

Downtrodden, Christchurch ushers in a new day
this 22nd afternoon,
dismantling the old one
brick by brick, life by life.

Now, I wait for confirmation
that my child is alive and well
and my mother's still out there breathing
and my friends and aunty and
the elderly man three doors down, are all okay.

Life is still.
All of the lights strobe red in sawdust fog,
cars rake along the city streets,
away from the concrete caveats.
The buildings creak to stay statued
before the worms start feeding under them.

Faces hurt,
ache to react and contain and release
but freeze, uncharacteristic, undecided, disabled.
These dust-covered ashen molds
from which I hope life may still emerge,
I cannot even touch,
though they have touched me.