Pukapuka Poem #46 'Pakuranga Lemonade' - Michael O'Leary

Pakuranga Lemonade

(Winter 1986)

put two lemons in a paper bag

add some brown sugar to taste and then …

fill the bag up with water

quickly, before the bag gets soggy, lie it on the ground

and stamp on it as hard as possible with one foot,

this recipe is guaranteed to give you at least one wet leg

and is quite undrinkable

a tree which loved lemons gave it to me

lemons had been the fruit

now this tree had been sacrificed

so that people could have a swimming pool

thick lumps of heavy, dead clay

had clogged its roots and killed its will

death came gradually –

the Polynesian labourer was the only one to see it

because people of Pakuranga had walked by him

as though he was a dead tree in their suburb

and in their white fright they saw him

as a leafless, ugly vision of wild threat

but he looked at the lemon tree and its outstretched branches

and saw that his brown skin matched the brown bark

so that as he lifted shovel load after shovel load

his dreams were of coconut trees and bright flowers

and catching fish in the sea of his island home of light

and colourful birds,

meanwhile, the other people

kept an eye on the progress of the hole in the ground