Culture Shock
The game plan:
God wants me to see
Through your Haitian eyes…
Show me what you are seeing
Tell me what you are saying
Touch me what you are feeling
Feed me what you are tasting
Sing me what you are hearing
With your Haitian permission
Help me to understand

The Hospital
The babies lay open
Exposed
Like unwrapped chickens
In the Kroger meat section
Under mosquito netting
With feasting gnats
Fat from the running sores
Of babies laying open
Exposed
Like unwrapped children
In the hospital meat section
Under mosquito netting
With feasting gnats
Fat from the running sores
Once a day a nurse child comes in
It is time to turn the meat
So the gnats can eat
From both sides of the children
At the hospital in Pignon where
The babies lay exposed
With open sores
Their eyes begging to die.

The Duel
Looking at me, looking at him
His inevitable Haitian death,
My inevitable American life
We both stared boldly at one another
Hopelessness versus potential
Standing toe to toe
The baby's last breath, slaps me in the face
The gauntlet is thrown, the duel is on.

Baby Don
The baby lay
Big headed
Covered with a net
A net that had captured
A happy, happy Haitian fly
It happily buzzed and buzzed
The baby lay with his legs spread wide
His abdomen
Barely two inches high off the bed
Ribs protruding tightly
Each one countable
Big wonderless eyes
Mouth open
The baby made a sound
A dry cry
Too weak to breathe
Hoping air would fall in
And the fly
Happy, happy fly buzzed.
The fly doesn't have to wait on the baby to die
To have it's turn
It drops into the baby's open mouth
That waits patiently for air to fall in.

A few days later when I returned to visit the child he was gone. Praise the Lord I grew excited at God's healing mercy. I asked about the baby and the nurses kept telling me the baby's name. Baby Don, baby Don they kept saying they repeated as they moved in slow motion tending their patients. I walked out from the clinic with a sense of pride at God's miraculous handiwork. Only to have our translator tell me that the nurses in their limited English were trying to tell me, “Baby gone, Baby dead.”

The Wishing Children
The wells stood disappointed
Thy had no water to satiate the wishing children
The fires went back to sleep
They had no heat to warm the wishing children.
The ground moaned in grief
It had no seeds to feed the wishing children
Smiles changed their minds
Laughter was not to be wasted on wishing children
Brains went into hibernation
Undernourished for the long winter's nap
The earth opened wide
It ate hungrily the children
Who no longer could wish.


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