Leaving

Waiting for the sun to come
creeping slyly up
over the roof of the rusted shed,
melting the frost and glancing
off the old leather suitcase
set down beside the gate.
Don’t look back
at the familiar sweep of hills,
the homestead crouched
in macrocarpa shadow:
feel the day’s first warmth
on your neck, soft as the cat
purring around your ankles –
but don’t look down,
keep both eyes fixed
on that long twist of road
and wait – for the sun,
for the bus,
for the future coming
with a hiss of air brakes
and a spray of gravel.

.

(c) Helen Lowe

Published in before the sirocco, NZ Poetry Society anthology, 2008 (ed. Joanna Preston)

—

“A commonly quoted estimate of out-migration from Christchurch after the February 2011 earthquake is 70,000 people” (Sapere Research Group, April 2011.) One of the results of last weeks 6.3 earthquake in Christchurch, which was the third major earthquake in 9 months and part of a ‘package” that has delivered over 7500 since September 4, 2010, is that a great mamy more people are thinking about their future here and leaving either temporarily or permanently. The Sapere Research Group report goes on, having looked at other disasters of comparable magnitude, to estimate that a more likely estimate of permanent out-migration over a 24 month period is likely to be 2.4%, ca. 10,000.

Whether 70,000 or 10,000 in the longer term, I wanted to post this poem today as a  reflection on the emotional cost of a circumstances-driven “leaving home”, both in the sense of “place” as well as family and friends. The poem was written long before September 2010 and is a reflection on the experience of young rural New Zealanders in having to leave home to find work / a career, ie nothing to do with earthquakes or either natural or human-generated disaster.

I also recognise that many of those choosing to leave Christchurch as a  result of the earthquakes will do so because they have lost people, homes, businesses and jobs, or simply because they are worn down by the constant shaking, the deprivation and the wider loss of amenity, community and connection to a physical sense of “place.”**

This poem makes no pretence of encompassing that level of severance but I do still hope that it has some relevance to the emotional dimension of “leaving. ”

.

** Note: In terms of that “wider loss of amenity, community and connection to a physical sense of ‘place’ “, two buildings that received considerable further damage as a result of last Monday’s earthquakes were the Anglican Christ Church Cathedral in Cathedral Square and the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Barbadoes Street—both landmark buildings in Christchurch’s physical cityscape. No official announcement has yet been made, although the “softening up” process has begun through the media, but I understand that both buildings are now to be demolished, either in whole or significant part. I think it is losses such as this that underline that the Christchurch cityscape as we knew and loved it is gone. What will rise from the ruins, phoenix-like or otherwise, remains to be seen.