Thursday, January 21, 2010

Like Your Hips Sway - A Poem For Haiti

The bones were found under the rubble,
the once swaying hip bones of yours,
the parts of you already suffering,
even before the ceilings crumbled, the
buildings collapsed into your bodies,
because there was never enough food to eat.

There is no medicine,
no room in the hospitals.
Dead bodies on the streets
lay still uncovered, even after a week
of the after shock.
Where do you put them? Where is there a
place big enough to fit all this sadness?

And here, we say Namaste and do your
Afro-Haitan dance moves with our eyes closed
on yoga mats placed two inches apart,
because there is not enough space
in this room for everyone’s love for you.

We give everything
we can, not because we know you,
but because those are your bones, your houses, 
your country. Because we want to see you dance again,
to rise from what has fallen, let your hips sway again
like the wild winds of this shaking Earth.



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