On the Scene (Poem)

On the Scene

Rubble-roughed hands reach
into what's left: the muddle of wires and masonry,
chipped, the pink paint flaking; a broken sink
a bin for books with broken spines, just so many
words caught in a dust up of bad Voudou.

    No one would have believed
    how the ridge line would peel away,
    the lush green hills cleave, how the rains
    would come to flash-flood the ravines
    of life once got by.

From what's junk the stick at the end
of the hands catches what at first gives not,
glints, then rattles and comes clean:
the eight-year-old's jawbone, the mother's skull
stripped of flesh by dogs on the scene; hungry, too.

    No one would have believed
    how the earth would give and take,
    leaving the husband but pictures wrapped
    so carefully now in plastic, preserving in color
    what lost becomes black and white, and lies stilled.

The hands motion against the eyes
recalling the place the husband last marked
his story retold, where mangoes, bananas, and yams
ripened to sweeten a patch of land called country,
his own reduced to a tarp on a sunken football field.

    No one would have believed
    how ordinary death would smell,
    how it would rise from collapse and float
    and six months later have gone,
    the shift in the air no longer
    the excitement of one more body found.

The hands make a move for sleeping,
rest to be broken on a bed of scavenged wood,
listening to kompa, perhaps some Haitian hip-hop,
growing courage with a thimble of rum, setting
the dominoes right, praying fate in spray-painted graffiti
in the pause before moving on again.

© 2010 Maureen E. Doallas
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I based imagery in this poem on on-scene interviews and reporting from Haiti, post-earthquake, at the six-month mark and more recently. I have been impressed, in particular, with the moving, if often disturbingly graphic, video, print, and online coverage from the Guardian, available here.

The state of this tiny island nation that now only infrequently commands our front pages strikes me as representative of the meaning of brokenness, the one-word prompt for the September 21 Blog Carnival sponsored by Bridget Chumbley at One Word at a Time.

The Blog Carnival is a biweekly online event open to anyone. Participants write either original poetry or prose reflecting their consideration of the one-word prompt or topic.

At Bridget's place you'll find a list of links to all of the Blog Carnival contributions, which are posted throughout Tuesday and often through to the end of the week.

The Blog Carnival's FaceBook page is here.

The prompt for the next Blog Carnival, scheduled for Tuesday, October 5, is "healing". The complete schedule of prompts through the end of the year also is available at Bridget's.

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I also wrote this poem for Carry on Tuesday, which each week provides a prompt that participants are to use wholly or partly in an original poem or prose piece.

The prompt for Tuesday, September 21, consists of the first words of Chapter One of Book One of H.G. Wells 1989 novel War of the Worlds: "No one would have believed . . . . "

To read other Carry on Tuesday contributors' poems or prose for Prompt #71, go here.

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I also offer this poem for One Stop Poetry's weekly "One Shot Poetry" event. Be sure to visit the site late Tuesday afternoon and every Wednesday for links to the many contributors' poems.