Writing

At dinnertime they make
their first mistake:
a chicken salad.

What would Buddha do?
The Welcome Pack says “kia ora”
and “Please be kind to the staff”.

If I send it back, the bird flesh,
soba noodles and soft green beans
will be thrown out, and some

poor kitchen worker
may be disciplined,
or worse, embarrassed.

What would Jacinda Ardern do?
I have no idea, but thinking
of kindness and gratitude

I eat it, and pay with a few
phrases for those who
lived     in order to serve

the twelve floors of inmates
in the Pullman Auckland
tower of luxury detention

with portions of protein.
I eat the chocolate cake too,
asking no further questions.

Windows is shutting down
and grammar are on its last leg
—Clive James

Yesterday. The weather forecast.
A low-pressure system
is trigger widespread showers.

O my English language! You are losing your
inflections. Your peaks and passes, your fells
and dales, your long suffixed and prefixed
conjugations, your ings and ations—
these are my native land,
my forest, its sighing trees,
my home valley, its musical birds,
my village—and you

are being changed. Your strata fracked,
the tops of your ancient hills knocked off
by the careless blades, the need for speed,
of unredacted profit-crazed globalisation—
your streams choked with the turgid sludge
of marketing shite and business jargon …

Okay, my nose wears glasses now,
and I walk the streets with care,
aware of my feet and the endless weight
of the chafing chains of metaphor—
but I never thought that I would ever be
an old woman keening for loss of country.
Yet here I am,

trying to sing in tune
while tune remains,
trying to speak in time
while

So I download Zoom
and Instagram
and Words with Friends
and CovidSafe

I dream I put
my phone on the track
to stop
an oncoming train

14 May 2020

First published in Written in the Time of COVID19, Shire of Nillumbik, Victoria, October 2020