I have been unborn into an under place

Shaken from my play to be buried deep.

Bright candles slowly snuffed out, crushed out.

Till all is dark and still.

There is a monster here

That growls with my stomach’s empty growl.

Its breath is hot upon my face, loud in this space.

It smells of dirt and death.

The ground still moves and trembles in my insides,

Tongue rasps on crackled lips as I call to empty air.

I search and find a hand to hold. Unfriendly, cold.

I sleep and drift away.

I dream I hear my father’s voice above

Shouts low and deep, the world shifts and moves.

Arms reach through mud and stone, they find my home.

An eye opens, all is white.

At last I am reborn, borne up and out

Delivered to my mother’s waiting breast.

Eyes burning, dust is in the air, my hair.

Pink ribbons in the dawn.

_______________________________________

I am so upset tonight. Tonight I sat and made myself look at some of the images from the Haiti earthquake. I read accounts of conditions there. I read of people’s terrible, unimaginable loss. I read of the injured and dying. The homeless, the displaced. Little or no food or water or medicine.

It is so easy to turn our backs on the horror. To figure that the tragedy has already happened and that we no longer need to think about it. It is so easy to be consumed by so much sadness and helplessness that we do nothing.

I have realised you have to look for hope. Tiny glimmers of light in so much darkness. Like a two year old girl, Mia Charlotte, pulled from the wreckage of her kindergraten virtually unscathed after being trapped for 72 hours and for whom I wrote my poem.

Hope frees us from inaction and paralysis. So many lives have been lost, but so many lives could still be saved if we act now. We can be these people’s hope if only we get off our asses and do something. NOW.

I have little money, but what I have I have given. I give my words too, and my thoughts and my prayers for what they are worth.

Give. It doesn’t need to be much, it just needs to be something.

Please.