Demolition

before the streets smell rain

an eye spies an opening in the clouds

the gaze curdles anticipation, 

traces a metronome louder than a bomb. 

fear splays the sun into smithereens

spreading laughter into the sky

I spoke to him once about it 

the morning after

People like to demolish things

To plant a seed you need a flat surface,
he said calmly

and belief is a hungry beast. 

his shoulder was a quiver of indignation

He had turned militant, nose wrinkled,

antennae rigid to the sound of the ambulance.

After decades of protecting his home, 

merely a memory of coconut palms

and the sepia of streetlamps 

illuminating newspaper print,

after seeing his children become fodder at traffic signals

after hiding behind his broken hutment when the bulldozers 

came, draped in saffron, and khaki, 

the sweeper understood to stay below the gaze, always. 

I keep my ear to the ground

Sometimes I hear my mother’s heartbeat

a lori to drown out the sound of development.

Kindness is a moan that doesn’t rise higher

than dream. Nobody notices the sweeper.

But the sweeper notices everything, his shield

is the scurrying of ants before the downpour.