Brought in on the waves of travelers
Coming and going
In the great waka of the air
The raging pandemic
Shook Aoteraoa.
It exposed our faults—
Our inability to prepare
Our collective anxiety
Which ran like jagged buckled lines
Outside supermarkets
As we jostled to line our kete 
With toilet paper that we would never need.
 
But as the country paused
We settled to wait
As people by a still pool
Who, having laid down hinaki
Wait for better moments.
The country hunkered down
We tended our maara
Pulled fresh kumara
Bottled feijoa
Stood at dawn with
Fences ANZAC Day ready.
 
Nurtured by Papatuanuku
We breathed slowly
In and out
And, despite it all,
Found and rejoiced 
In a new peace.
 
Notes: A kete is a woven Maori flax basket.
A hinaki is a woven flax eel trap.
A maara is a vegetable garden.
Papatuanuku is Earth Mother.
ANZAC Day is when New Zealand and Australia remember 
those who have fought or who serve in the armed forces.
                        

He snaps off the television with
Its dire predictions if we do not heed the warnings:
Stay home. Save Lives. Unite. No essential travel
Stay in your bubble.
Stumps down his path.
Corpulent
Reddened face
Thick-necked and bullish,
He is inflated with hot air
The foetid stuffiness of a sick room.
 
His street is empty,
People inside 
Obeying the rules.
Lockdown loaf their new friend.
Sough dough starter,
Popped slow yeasty bubbles
While outside
A new raised garden takes shape
And, over fences
Safely distant,
Neighbours talk of brassicas, feijoas
Of kittens lost and found.
 
He mocks it all
The Prime Minister
Calmly confident 
The straight-talking microbiologist,
Pink-haired 
With her many graphs and statistics
Who measures a world 
And weighs up threats.
So many precautions and restrictions
That he brushes off
As though dandruff, or dirt on his shoes.
Such inconvenient scaremongering
Impinging on his rights.
 
Across town,
In his office
Squalid
With yesterday’s jam lying sticky on unwashed benches
He feeds his goldfish.
Fat sausage fingers
Drop small brown fish flakes
Like sloughed skin
Like yesterday’s news.
His Piggy bloodshot eyes
Watch the small ripples form.
Radiating outwards.
 
The goldfish swims in his own glass bubble. 
He too cares little for rules and statistics.
About the brevity of a goldfish’s memory. 
Just three seconds, it was said.
Measured.
Calculated.
 
The man stands to leave
To pass again through deadened streets
Where time stands still
All given up
For a virus to run its course.
 
At his temple
A vein, or was it an artery?
Suddenly throbs
As his blood bubbles.
His heart strains
Convulses and jerks
Out of rhythm
Out of time.
 He grabs his jersey
With one meaty fist
Grapples for air
For a final chance
To go back
To follow the rules.
But falls forward
Dead
His heart has gone.
 
Inside his aquarium bubble
The goldfish stops
 Stares
Flicks his tail in a final ironic salute.
So long!
He says.
And thanks for all the fish.