After the Tsunami

From my second collection of poems, The Price of Memory: After the Tsunami

After the Tsunami

Pain is in the swollen silence
That comes after watching
The broadcast news-
Laughter fades
Deep calls to deep of every nation
Eyes search for a place,
To lay down the sorrow.

Trapped in a web of tangled emotions,
Wordless wounds fester,
We stand on the banks and exhume the debris
Remembrance is nothing but this crumbled pile.

We did not notice how it started,
Waves that were callous
Gathered their force and ripped us apart
Wails of a thousand voices echo:
Prove that God is there, attest to his care!

We are stripped of all answers.
Tears happen,
Hearts splinter
Loneliness and terror,
Make their visitation known
This is what it means;
To hold infinity in a grain of sand,
To watch leaves blown by wind fall to the ground
We too are severed by the seasons' change,
The price of memory crippled by loss.

The sky wears a cloak of bereavement
The moon is somber stricken,
We hung between despair and brokenness
Strands of grief weave us together
We are knotted into a ball of mourning
Wrapped in heartache's arms
Only blinding faith and generous hands sustain us,
In the wake of Tsunami.