Radio news bulletin in the car
the last item read in those mellifluous tones
is about a seven-year-old boy
struck and killed by a car
in a poor suburb of Wellington.
The protocol around the legal and privacy issues
means itβs βno name, no pack drillβ,
but he was someone,
someoneβs son, grandson
perhaps even great-grandson.
He had probably had siblings,
definitely friends and playmates.
Somewhere in a house with
inadequate winter heating,
where the household income is
constantly under siege
and life never rises above a struggle,
there is a mother and a father
who bear this greatest grief.
ο Andrew M. Bell
The poet acknowledges "The Typewriter", the online literary journal in which this poem was first published.
