Tsunami


Windows of churches, temples, mosques, stained with tears,
People fighting to keep their faith.
Too many families shredded. Ripples around the world.
Too sudden, this bludgeoning of humanity.
Beautiful nature’s moment of insanity.
Over vast distances. Too many islands
And too many abandoned human islands, too much grief.
Enough tears cried to form another tsunami,
And shape another watery army to slap God’s hand …………
For some things, we just cannot understand.
Too much flesh, blood and bone destroyed, lost.
Young ones, loved ones, someones, anyones.
No goodbyes.
Nor time for belated goodbyes.
Lost, rotting or swirling in depths by some foreign shore.
Snatched, forsaken, brazenly taken
As if nothing matters, scattering debris of distress, heartache,
Misery for generations to come.
Homeless, starving, living within the stench of death,
Assuredly awaiting only one promised vistor –
The scavenger of catastrophe …….. disease.
Wide eyed Motherless babies held by Fathers
Or parentless babies held lovingly by strangers
Clinging, gurgling, crying, smiling
Unaware of a future scavenger, future dangers,
Unaware of what took place only days ago.
Rescuers can only bulldoze bodies into a mass grave,
So few to save and little to rebuild ………
Only gaping holes to be filled.
But they can’t fill holes in demolished lives,
So they continue to bulldoze, wearing masks
That can’t mask their tears.

And now the seas are silky smooth, tropical blue,
Reflecting an innocence,
Inviting humanity back to the beach …… within reach.

But this memory will prevail,
And as Mankind closes its doors on 2004
And opens its doors to 2005,
We will weep and pray for multitudes,
Knowing a fragile future awaits us all,
For we are alive.

I don't know about anyone else around here, but I feel so helpless in the face of something of this magnitude. Makes me want to pack up and go over to one of those countries to help - but what help would that really be? Come home with some disease brought about by the aftermath, if I came home at all? My kids need me here, not in a foreign country battling pestilence, desperately trying to make a hundred thousand families feel better.

I did look into the Red Cross, wanting to give them half the contents of my house to help those people who've lost everything, and all they will accept is money. That's the one thing I don't ever have enough of, so far.

I feel a little better in knowing that Canada has sent $30 Million in aid, and that the Red Cross is sending whatever personnel and financial aid they can, but certainly wish there was more that I could do besides pray.

Thank you very much, Rusty, you've put in beautifully poetic words the horror of this particularly brutal lash of nature. Somehow it helps.

Alice