Poetry: Pray for Nepal

Swirling, smoking plumes rise heavenward:  thousands of billowing pyres burn with bodies and straw;

People crushed, both alive and dead, carry on a tradition all over Nepal.

By the will of the gods, dark turmeric smoke is life’s breath to the wind,

As is its nature, the body returns to the sky, a gift that its family sends.

The heaving ground broke open their souls, leaving gaping holes deep and black,

Unnerved, unprepared, enveloped by chaos; this poor country was caught by surprise attack.

As history flows from the Bagmati into the Ganges; Nepal’s tragedy washes into Bengal’s yellow bay; life’s shraddha (inheritance) is more than what is evident today.

Blessed are the meek, the survivors of this disaster; their only hope is that relief arrives faster.

How can they inherit an earth that so quickly and violently destroyed their nation?

My thoughts put to poetry don’t help the situation; but what can I do for Kathmandu?

All I can do is #pray4Nepal

©Mark H. Pillsbury (Houston)

["A poem... begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion finds the thought and the thought finds the words..." (Robert Frost, 1916)]