Tectonic

This country rests on two great plates.  It’s they that produce the instability
and also the fun stuff - geysers, hot pools, volcanoes. The land never sleeps. 
My grandfather looks out the window and says,
Let’s never forget that terrible earthquake that devastated Napier back in ‘31. 
Everything gone.  The insurance blokes called it an ‘act of God’,
Which failed to wash with the non-believers, who blamed it on the world. 
Were there warnings, were there signs – a stillness in the air? 
Did the birds freeze in mid-song?  Did the animals act strangely?   
Crisis after crisis - a litany of tragedies.  Or else, improvisation.   
Lampposts invented new angles.  On the band rotunda, the clock hands stuck,
forever 10.47 a.m. – the time the earthquake struck.  Everything did something;    
gas pipes broke, power lines snapped, harbour walls buckled,
roads split open wide, railway lines twisted. 
Nothing so out of the ordinary –
just the earth running through its checklist, ticking boxes.  
The dust rose, and then settled.  Just in time for the fire. 
It swept through, a wave of flame.
Unfortunates were trapped beneath beams. 
Doctors rushed forward, morphine in hand –
soon the captured felt no pain.  Cliffs fell.   
Some spent the night in the open air. 
Kind people in nearby towns opened up their homes. 
Most hotels were destroyed –
the Masonic collapsed completely, a wall at the Empire crumbled,
Leaving the rooms on one side exposed.  Guests awoke – looked out into empty space,     
fresh vacancy in their eyes.  They’d lost their city, a lovely one.   
But my, O my, with what fortitude, what resilience,
what purpose of mind, they rebuilt the place.
All that glorious Art Deco.  Decorated stucco. 
Street by street, wall by wall, up it went;
the best architects were shipped down from the big smoke,
to plot and plan and design. 
There was a carnival of sorts – the city was declared ‘reborn’.
Citizens threw their hands in the air and rejoiced.  They had been given new land. 
The sea had retreated for good.  After all, no great disaster. 
Like all endings, it was also a beginning. 
The city that had been faded in their minds. 
(The art of forgetting isn’t hard to master.)   
The plates continue their treacherous work – no, they are not to be trusted.   
They shift beneath like restless children that refuse to go to bed –
There’s fun stuff on TV - let’s stay up, wreak havoc, spread dread.   
My grandfather looks out the window, takes in the wisp of smoke, says -
They say Rangitoto’s going to blow.
And though nobody can predict the exact hour when the thing will go, 
they say, any day now, any day now – when it happens you will know.