Upheaval
By Ivy Schweitzer | February 5, 2001in India on Friday the earth moved unexpectedly and shook down houses like matchsticks whole towns of 35,000 were leveled as many as 15,000 may have disappeared in the rubble It is not a region one newscaster intoned unfamiliar with disasters but such numbers are inconceivable rescue crews say the limit for survivors is 100 hours but five days later people are being delivered from debris a woman is unearthed, a seven month old baby in her lap covered with blood still breathing on saturday the earth quaked in our quiet valley a region where disasters are unfamiliar yes, in our world of scholars, students and friends we have our likes and dislikes our passions and despairs people hunt with guns kill animals and each other, sometimes, accidentally. more often, we slay reputations and ignorance with words and pithy arguments we give birth at home by the deft hands of midwives and cradle babies protectively in our laps. but on saturday night our world unhinged as surely as the shifting of tectonic plates a swift, sudden, secret blow drained the lives of two in our magic circle Susanne and Half, many of us have been with you in those last dreadful moments we have imagined what we do not and cannot know about death over and over in desperation to draw close to you and touch what binds us to bear with you and for you as if our bearing it could bear it away . . . what sense can be made from such wrenching? nothing could prepare us for this. we are not ready to let you go days later the debris of that night still crushes us and out of place in our little lives we have only each other and memories of you smiling to unearth us