Above Manukau Harbour
Passed this cemetery many times
without once stopping, making
dutiful tracks to see my father's sister
and her husband Uncle Al -
they had been kind to me in my youth.
Latterly I'd call by when in town
more to marvel how they tested
constantly each other's patience.
How many marriages come to this!
Which was the carer each needed? Neither.
An hour of them and I'd be gone.
Back on the road - that cemetery!
colonists, pioneer graves, were they?
proclaiming 'We took the best land,
even our dead have the best views!
Below's a panorama of our making,
prosperous traffic, trading profits,
a port, a highway, bridges.'
Not to mention power pylons.
Had I been a camera-carrier
I'd surely have pulled over,
strolled about, lined up headstones
and the odd weathered angel
with harbour below, quiet
like time steadied and slowed -
the Manukau, western, tidal,
opening to the rough Tasman
somewhere far to the right.
More planes than ships to be seen
these days, though the port survives,
and fishermen in small boats kill
maybe more hours than they catch fish.
The sky is always huge, dramatising
the weather and its south-west changes.
Now aunt and uncle have had their funerals,
neither graced by me, despite a promise.
They don't lie here - besides, I don't 'do graves'.
Perhaps they're side by side, in silence
finally harmonious. Elsewhere.
An hour to spare, a smart-phone in my hand -
today or never I may pause here,
living out my last years way over the Tasman -
I'm prowling with the camera ready
settling vertical monuments between
horizontal land-and-water vistas.
Click. Pause, Save. Try for a better angle,
better framing - click. Is it filed in Photos?
Try for that moment when a gull flies over
like a restless revenant, here
a short while, suddenly elsewhere.
The gravestones lean together one way
suspended still above the sea.
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