From America I watched…
The baby was caked in soot
Panicking
People hopped over it
without a second look
A new born
fallen fresh from its mother's core
The mother crushed beside it
half in, half out the door
For 3 days
the baby pitifully cried
For 3 days
folks ignored and stepped aside
It took 3 full days--
then the baby died.

Somebody wipe the baby off…please…just wipe the baby's eyes. Use a little spit and your thumb, or the corner of your apron like grandmother did, get something…a rag…use your shirt tail…doesn't anyone carry a handkerchief anymore? Stop talking about them like that. Stop showing them as if they are aliens…sub humans…less than us. There's a mother running with her child. “Run mother run! Run child run!” Turn off the camera, that's not supposed to be shown. Is that a leg? Just a leg?

I rushed into my busy, busy office. Not again Jesus, no, not again. Wasn't September 11th bad enough? Wasn't the Katrina hurricane enough? I chomped down my spreading behind. I was too far angry to acknowledge the groan of my wicker vanity chair. I wrapped my flabby arms tightly around my heaving chest and like an insane person, I rocked and rocked and rocked.

See that's what happens when they don't listen. Nobody would listen to me, but they're listening now. They hear me now. They see me now. They smell me now. They taste me now. Nobody can hide now what I've been telling them all along. They needed to know what I know. But now it's gone, gone as it will never be known again. However…I've got it. Tear sheets, snapshots, pieces of laughter, handy heart work, precious prayers, ditties of a miracle land. Right here in my over stuffed office, my hibernation den with pieces of me everywhere…African masks…mammy candles…Aunt Jemima cookie jars…books by black after black after black authors, sprinkled with Poe, Shakespeare, Coulter…and Bible book after Bible book after Bible book, cuddled up next to my eclectic taste in fashion--my creative ruins.

Ruins. Port-au-Prince is lying in ruins. I will not cry. I will not give the gaping world all tuned into CNN and the media wizards the satisfaction. Cry as you must Haiti but don't you let the cameras see. Come hibernate with me Haiti, and find refuge with me in my office. This wound is too deep to openly share. Haiti, my disassembled, my disemboweled, my destroyed Haiti. Forever changed…

What can I do? My arms hang heavy beside me, petrified. This is enormous. I rock harder. Chanting. What can I do, what can I do, what can I do? For 10 years on the mission field God has taught me that he uses people to accomplish his tasks to fulfill his promises, to work His miracles. But this is so very, very colossal. I've got to do something. Something huge. Something bigger than big. I'm afraid. I'm …afraid. Afraid of…of…disappointing God. But even worse…I'm afraid of …disappointing Haiti. I keen like ancient women of days gone by, and moan and grieve and weep...what can I do?


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