Riverstone

When first you came
you were formed from jade
inlaid with topaz

firestones beneath swift water

you communicated through dreams
and our hearts/minds/spirits
interwove frokm silken strands
steel cable

when first I touched you
my skin fused with yours

molecules interlocked
as though finding magnetic opposites

greedy for you
I starved
whenever parted from you

all down the years
I would give you my best day
without question/
hesitation/
never asked any return

so it hurts
to be referred to as
'those people'

silver service has accrued
a slight tarnish

Missing Pieces

I saw in you a place cut
to the shape of me
and thought I spied
finally
a place where I might fit

summer ends
where fading light
delineates
a paper cut in the sky
that almost fit
the shape of I

Leonard Peltier

His eyes reflect the cage.
Does he regret?
He regrets the waste
of each clear blue sky
and days watching
the eagle soar above paths
he has been denied.

and so

the earthquakes continue to rumble through here. I almost sprained my ankle leaping for the doorway as a big jolt hit this morning. Lots of houses are sustaining more damage in the after shocks which have been fairly grunty. Some have been up to 5-5.2 on the Richter scale.

I heard a story yesterday about a little old lady in Kaiapoi who stepped out her back door and went up to her waist into a crack opened by the earthquake, and her next door neighbour who went in over her head! How scary would that be!

The whole ground seems fluid here at the moment. The house feels as though it's sitting on a cushion of jelly. Makes you feel a bit dizzy a lot of the time. My cats are both freaked out and have disappeared. I hope they're holed up somewhere safe. I'm relying on their instinct for comfort and survival to keep them safe.
I'm nervous about going to work. Half of the restaurant I work in is a conservatory, so big thick sheets of glass over my head. Not happy at the thought of one of them breaking.

Dave went off to work this morning, then turned around and headed back to see if we were okay after that big jolt. He said he was at St Martins supermarket when it hit and all the lights in the supermarket fell out and smashed on the floor!

holy shit! 7.4 earthquake!

Huge earthquake in ChCh this morning. Felt like the house was jumping up and down! 7.4.
We have no water, but otherwise ok. Lots of damage citywide though. Bridges out, buildings collapsed etc. My dad says he thinks his house will be a write off. He has doors that won't open or shut and floor going up and down. His paths outside have disappeared.
My sister says there are cracks in the ground all around their house in Waikuku, and cracks all around the oval next door where sand has bubbled up through the soil.

I heard that Victoria Sq where my work is looks like a war zone! Who knows whether my workplace will still be there?
There are power outages, no water, gas leaks and petrol pumps popped out of the ground. No one killed though, just a lot of minor injuries.