Earthquake by Lavinia Kumar

What is the distance between grabbing bags
of rice from a moving aid truck, and lying
dead dust-covered on a stretcher, later to be
dumped by a shovel-truck into a dusty hole
with thousands, those who might have fought
together for a bottle of water, for space
in a tent near running sewage, for grains
of rice mixed with dry earth picked one
by one in a mad race to eat? After the rains
dry, fragments of separate soil are left, long
gone are trees for shade and caskets, brooks
are enough to hold souls for a year and a day
from a distance of life partly lived,
long after the romance of tomatoes in spring,
red-orange soft mangoes hanging from trees –
oh, see the dead man’s right arm up as though
he could hold the falling building away,
but it came to him and left a coat of gentle
white powder, though later in the burial
hole his legs and arms were quickly gone,
mixed with too many bodies, some may have
had fond memories of fruits and fish picked
in the middle of life, spiced into a meal
with candlelight, but souls not cared for
in the hole are not great good angels,
they may wander and cause danger,
they are family spirits now lost.
Once, there had been feeling,
there must have been a moment
when fingers reached
and touched.

About Lavinia: I’m from Ireland, my husband’s from India, and the lives of our four kids are just as mixed up.  So of course I write.  And have been published on both sides of the Atlantic.