Selecting Balance

 

I was listening to the national news a couple of weeks ago, when I heard the newscaster end the nightly report by reading email from listeners who he relayed were, “Tired of the coverage on hurricane Katrina.”  After reading a few of the emails, the

reporter admonished the letter writers, by reminding them that search and rescue  teams were still trying to locate and identify the  missing and dead in the affected areas. He ended by saying that the station and its affiliates felt  it was important to keep reporting the story.

 

I'm sure that many of the folks who were miffed by the constant coverage of the Katrina catastrophe, had not followed closely the depth of this life altering devastation in America. Or if they had, then they may be suffering from what many of us have been suffering from in these recent years; a collective grief combined with a sense of how unnerving things have become.  

 

It is unnerving to know that somewhere here in our America, that there are the unclaimed, decomposing aunts and uncles, grandparents, siblings, moms and dads, friends, cousins, babies, and pets. It is unnerving to know that there are so many people who have no closure. It is unnerving to hear five months after the storm about the garbage strewn acres of land that are still there. This land for generations belonged to individuals who were once whole.

 

When those families were whole and healthy with their land they were sure of their identity.They knew that they belonged to the fabric  of something bigger than themselves as property owners in America. They fit because they had a past, which they could point to in the tangible things of their lives.They had a past where they could say they did what they were supposed to do as hard working citizens, to achieve their "piece of the rock" or their hold on the "American Dream".

 

It is unnerving to hear about the daily struggles of these regular folks who have little or no control over their present, no profitable ownership of their past, and absolute uncertainty about their future. It is unnerving and unsettling in the "land of the free, and home of the brave",  to have to come face to face with the absolute fragility of our existence.  I applaud the journalists who are willing to tell the people's story,  and not allow them to slip off of our radar.

 

Selecting Balance

 

There was no security strong enough in the

homeland to prevent this mass destruction.

 

They who taught the children how to envision and sing,

they who breathed life into all things worth savoring,

 

were grandmothers once saved then drowned on roofs,

and grandfathers  shut-up and smothered in attics,

 

Their hearts may have been opened or slammed shut

their eyes may have perceived light, then vision deceived,

 

their houses not solid like mine or out of harms way,

first slammed, then battered and washed away like toys,

 

their sweet heart babes shaken and swept up

in the smothering arms of an unleashed lake,

 

unsettling revelations of  America’s modern day 

refugees, mar the facade of the oval office’s swagger,

 

who knew that one nation under God

would fall so deeply  into disarray.

 

Bulldozed into a cemetery of dreams deferred

memories fester in gaping, rancid ice boxes,

 

the timbre of shock and awe, haunts the air.

 

 

Linda Joy Burke

All Rights Reserved by Author