Praying for family in Haiti

My sister in law and her husband live in Port-au-Prince, Haiti with their two children. My thoughts have been with them constantly since the earthquake on Tuesday, which left most of the city in shambles. Their house is standing, as is the school where my brother-in-law is headmaster and my sister-in-law is a teacher.

I can't help but sit at the computer and search for article after article, picture after picture, trying to understand the trauma they've experienced--and that they're going through in the aftermath. The children are foremost in my mind. It must be such a terrifying experience, and confusing for ones so young.

That said, I think of them and their situation, and I realize that while they've been severely traumatized and terrified, they're with their parents every night, and their home is intact. There are children all around them sleeping in the streets. There are children trapped in the rubble. There are children who have lost their parents, or parents who have lost their children. It's all so very overwhelming, even from this distance, and I'm dreadfully thankful that my nephew and my niece are alive and well and being cared for by their parents, and not by strangers or relief workers.

White Christmas

20 December 2009

Madness infuses the everyday

rituals that help our home get through

the holidays, but now and then we manage

contentment--as near perfection

as we’ll ever get--as near the wishes,

hopes and dreams we’ve feared

we’d never realize as we can hope to come.

I am given to analysis,

though I could never manage to encapsulate

what makes these moments happen,

what gives me eyes to see this

brief window into Paradise. I’ll quit now,

while I’m ahead and my vision’s clear,

the children are here and ours

for a white Christmas.

Letter

29 October 2009

Inspired by The Weekend Wordsmith

photo courtesy of Pink Sherbet

Correspondence is a lost art--

not the type it in and click send sort.

The kind that exacts a price

in ink, paper, postage, and hands sore

from gripping a well made pen.

Most everything is faster now than it was

when I was a kid. Back then, everything was

faster than it had been before.

I wonder at what point we’ll lose

our equilibrium; revert of necessity

to a less dizzying pace. Maybe then we’ll sit

down of our own accord on a summer evening

with a glass of actual fresh-squeezed lemonade;

write a letter to someone who remembers

less hectic times than we do.