A street that had a name

Christchurch, New Zealand
- in the residential red zone left by the quakes of 2010-11

It’s a street that had a name
But it no longer needs one
No one is going home to it now
Gardens grow wildly
Their minders gone with the walls and ceilings and roofs
Shaken from settled suburban lives

It’s a street of broken dreams, broken concrete
Strewn with steps to be watched lest they break bones
But just past the chill of an early spring dawn
It’s a street of molten gold
A glowing trail to a river rising vaporously out of itself
Into a temporary tangled tryst with the day’s first rays

It’s a street where the gaunt, ghostly silhouettes
of winter flesh out spring green
But there are still ghosts here
Of lives once rooted in this flourishing meander
The trees age, their annual fruit returning
To be foraged by walkers passing
But gates and their number are forgotten
in a greening space that’s freely traversed

It’s a street with cracks in the pavements
Cracks in the tarmac, cracks in the souls
Of those whose ruptured lives
Forced them away to start anew
But there’s green now in those cracks
In the fence lines’ post impressions
And the street’s a home to birds and bugs

and hope