Category: Poems about Loss

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Poet Colleen Hannah

LIVING LIFE IN A SUBDUCTION ZONE

Forced down and shifting sideways
Living life in a subduction zone
The mantle’s quaking dust has flown
The clock stopped counting time is done

Living life in a subduction zone
And it’s heave ho and away we go
Clock stopped counting time is done
I wait in line for cracks to form

And it’s heave ho and away we go
The love wave starts its surface hum
I wait in line for cracks to form
Dig my fissure root within

The love wave starts its surface hum
It is all or nothing stick the pin
Dig my fissure—root within
Clinging deep the earth gives in

Forced down and shifting sideways
Living life in a subduction zone
And it’s heave ho and away we go
The love wave starts its surface hum…

Colleen Hannah, @1RoguePoet http://www.vancouverislandpsychosis.wordpress.com lives on Vancouver Island, right next door to the Cascadia Subduction Zone. She wrote me, “Knowing an earthquake like Japan’s could happen here as well, I wrote my poem keeping in mind how fragile we are not only in body but in love and life as well, I hope it will help in some small way.”

She adds, “This is a pantoum with parataxis ending in invented form. The invented form consists of changing traditional ending to using first lines of the first 4 stanzas, in a five stanza pantoum, as the last 4 lines of last stanza.” Here’s her traditional ending to the poem:

TRADITIONAL ENDING

It is all or nothing time to win
The mantle’s quaking dust has flown
Clinging deep the earth gives in
Forced down and shifting sideways

___________________________________

JAPAN

There is a day when waking
we shed our swings of innocence
picking up the tools
of promise
we work to change the world.

________________________________________

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Poet Mike Cowan

black muddy waters

black muddy waters
came rolling by
they’ve swept my love
in their raging tides

Earth, to my wife
had sworn to be,
a home of peace
to her and me

but waters rose
from angry seas
and covered Earth
and lands and we

and in the swift
blink of an eye,
my love was sailed
to the Other Side.


Mike Cowan is a Southern poet living in rural Jackson County, Georgia.
On writing this poem, Mike commented on his own blog, Southern Musings, http://southernmusings.wordpress.com “I actually saw a picture of this man walking on top of literally a field of twisted metal and cars and debris. The caption read that he was looking for his wife.”
________________________________________

Thanks for reading Poets for Tsunami Relief.

Please consider a donation to The Red Cross.

In Canada, go to: http://www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=000043&tid=016

In the UK, go to: http://www.redcross.org.uk/Donate-Now

In both Canada and the US, click on the red buttons I’ve added on my sidebar

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Poet Natasha Head

Will We Ever Hurt

Across the ocean, around the world
Devastation knows no limits
When our kind are left to suffer
As happenstance or coincidence
Embraces them in a vice like grip

Our prayers fly, but not fast enough
As families are torn
Tossed like discarded paper
Into the vortex of the unknown
Swimming toward the ether

I can’t tear my eyes away
Power, raw and uncompromising
No judgment, for in Her wrath
We are all equals
Saints and Sinners united

Disbelief as the numbers rise
Heart aching, knowing
I will never understand
The grief, the pain, the fear
The Loss

The world suddenly grows quiet
Piece by ravaged piece
Will the puzzle ever be solved?
Will the pieces ever again fit?
We change, as the result

Blessed in the safety of my home
Loved ones surrounding me
Watching the turn of the tide
Will we ever hurt?
Will we ever understand the loss?


Natasha Head is a poet from the east coast of Canada. She writes me, “While I’ve seen the strength of the ocean in my Nova Scotia homeland, nothing could ever compare to what what’s happened in Japan. I urge you, each and everyone, to give what little you can spare to help those who are in need so much more than we are, RIGHT NOW.”
Please visit her blog at http://natashalivestowrite.blogspot.com/

________________________________________

Thanks for reading Poets for Tsunami Relief.

Please consider a donation to The Red Cross.

In Canada, go to: http://www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=000043&tid=016

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UK Poet Dave Whippman

Tanka

Buildings fall, streets flood:
An aerial view of distress.
Most suffering, though, has no image.
It takes its victims unseen;
Does not recede like water.

Dave Whippman is a UK poet and prose writer. He lives in the north of England.
________________________________________

Thanks for reading Poets for Tsunami Relief.

Please consider a donation to The Red Cross.

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Poet Robert Smith

Now it’s beautiful

Now it’s beautiful.

The snow drips from the heavens
in white large frozen tears of
the angels and i am hypnotized
like a man struck by just how
a woman walking can leave him
speechless.

Now it’s beautiful.

Whereas before it was rainy
and gloomy, and the snow was
black and iced hard except for
the slush that was loose and ready
to give out under you no matter
how well you strut. But,

now it’s beautiful,

and i sit in the dark here in my
room. 15 stories from the ground
and the dripping tears dance
backlit by the lights of Times Square
and all i can think of is

now it’s beautiful.

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Robert Smith is a poet originally from Outside of Buffalo, NY, who lived in California, but now lives in Georgia. His Twitter page @rasmithii says he tweets his poems “from an airport near you.”

Thanks for reading Poets for Tsunami Relief.

Please consider a donation to The Red Cross.

In Canada, go to: http://www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=000043&tid=016

In the UK, go to: http://www.redcross.org.uk/Donate-Now

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