Soup Kitchen, St Kilda: A Book of Hours
A thousand journeys bring us to this moment. Matins.
Under streetlamps, we hurry from bus and tram
while the moon floats above industrial rooflines.
Beauty is everywhere. In smiles too, and words between us.
Today, we’ll meet people who sleep in parks,
others who crossed oceans to be here.
They come out of hunger. But everyone yearns for love.
Lauds. When day breaks, music’s playing,
we spoon stewed fruit and cereal into bowls.
Remember visiting Tabgha, on the Sea of Galilee?
Place of miracles, place of peace.
Warm, blue sky day beneath the Mount of Beatitudes.
The door opens. Hungry people pile in from Grey Street.
Tabgha and St Kilda are not so far apart.
The first hour of daylight. Prime. Eating breakfast together.
Above scraping chairs, there’s talk and laughter,
clatter of cutlery and plates. No quiet contemplation.
But so much to celebrate in the hall’s buzz.
Moving between tables, circling back to the kitchen,
moments arise where we voice a prayer off-the-cuff,
just as we join the chorus when the radio blasts a classic hit.
The crowd drifts away, we clean the kitchen. Terse.
Buckets of food scraps make a mosaic
down the path to the dumpster.
I think of the garbage can model of decision making —
solutions chasing problems. How’s that relevant to us?
(Friends from the urban farm come and empty the buckets.)
For any problem the solution is love.
Sext. Tracing a path through heavy traffic, I drive
across town, collecting food from donors.
Wrong turn after wrong turn. The navigator
recalibrates smoothly, putting me back on track.
In this sixth hour of the day, the world is overwhelming.
Waiting at traffic lights, I pray for manic drivers
honking their horns. May we all find peace.
Now we prepare the hall for supper. None is the hour.
Checking task lists, timelines, speaking calmly,
the chef runs the kitchen like an urban angel.
Always forgiving. Front of house, others greet guests,
inquire about their days, their plans for the night.
Young faces, old faces, new faces, known faces,
saints in the thick of it, incognito.
After hours of kitchen work, a break. Vespers.
Our minds wander to earlier times,
sharing moments of reflection and song.
Like that visit to Rome — fading sun illuminating
stained glass, choir singing a Gregorian chant,
ancient priest swinging the incense burner.
Everything we do goes back so far.
Compline. Home at last, stepping out, looking
over the bay. Stiff breeze blowing, stars shining,
blinking lights demarcating shipping lanes.
It’s late. I try to put aside thoughts of the day,
contemplate this life on Earth —
all the mysteries, all the wonders. Waves.
Waves of faces. Every wave. Every face.
.
Michael Mintrom is from Aotearoa New Zealand and lives in Australia. His poems have appeared in various literary journals in those two countries, such as Landfall, Meanjin, Meniscus, takahē and Westerly. Other recent work can be found in Amsterdam Quarterly,Blue Mountain Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Literary Yard, London Grip, The Metaworker, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore,and Shot Glass Journal.
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