JAPANESE SURVIVOR Ruth Wildes Schuler
The old man sits alone in the cold night air,
alone on a broken chair, upon the rubble of what
was once his home. He was in the garden
when the earthquake struck,
but his family was inside the house
which crumpled like crepe paper.
He tried to lift the boards to free them,
but they were too heavy.
The neighbors warned him of the coming waves,
but he would not leave his imprisoned loved ones.
So they pulled him up the mountain.
The tsunami dragged his home, wife and children
out to sea. He returned to find only a few boards
where his life had once been.
He had found this broken chair and now sat in the cold night air,
Waiting and waiting. There is no food, no water, and all
the jackets and blankets had been washed out to sea to cover the fishes.
No one can reach him, for the roads have been washed out,
and wreckage and debris lays heaped across the landscape.
He shivers, His teeth chatter, but what does it matter?
He waits for death, uncertain if it will come in the form
of starvation or freezing. He doesn’t know, and then
the snow begins to fall. Why did this happen? He doesn’t know.
Everything and everybody is gone. He looks to the heavens,
but the snow obliterates the stars. His chair starts to slid
and then tips, sending him to the ground. He sits there
with tears running down his cheeks. Waiting! Waiting! Waiting!
He knows not for what.
留言列表
