Manuka
Deliver us from blood, O God,
for it lacks the viscosity to hold us up now,
the sweetness to warm us on days like these.
We are done with its showy scarlet
each time it meets a nick or slit, its headlong
dash through us, the blue badge it leaves where
we are struck. Give us instead honey,
let us wander through the film-sets of this city
as serene as manatees, generous with our time,
our words of hope full-weighed
and waited for, our every fight or fall distracted
into dance as slow as reef-fish and as bright.