Poet, how are you to write?
How are you, on our darkest day
To find and offer light?
I’m texting with Riz Khan
Who offers
Condolences
Offers love and peace
An emoji of praying hands
For our Muslim brothers
And sisters lost
In mosques
In Christchurch.
Riz mirrors
The horror of an open
Mouthed world weeping
For Masjid Al Noor
For Linwood Masjid
It must be of a Big Love
Aroha Nui
A Strong Love
Aroha Toa
Of which the poet writes.
A big, strong, call to arms
Of love
Its relentless embrace
Surrounding us from
All parts
All places
In this world.
We are 200 ethnicities here
We are 600 languages here
We remain so.
And if my evangelistic In-Law
Finally walks through
The dark and dusty village
Of her beliefs about ‘muslims’
Finally sees herself
Kneeling in a mosque
Head scarved
Hands steepled in prayer
Sees her own bowed body
Bloody in worship
Sees the same spirit
Shafting through the air
Then there’s the light, Poet,
There’s the light.
Riz sends me pics
From Windsor
A dawning sun inhaling fog’s breath
The Long Walk.
