Disaster Work

On a hilltop overlooking the Caribbean
a tribute to the fallen.
Their DNA accompanied by a soldier
for each sample.
A hotel pancakes. Its visitors become
mummies, a piece of hair or skin,
a fingernail specimen.

Classical music plays in the background
of the carnage in my mind.
(The Ko'olau Mountains shelter like
a green velvet curtain.
Kaneohe Bay peers serene between
hau trees and ti leaves.)
Yet, this is a work of disasters-
of battlefields and outdoor morgues,
forensics multiplied exponentially beyond TV.

Piercing the netting, a mosquito buzzes
near his line up of photos; he studies
before and after, accounts of witnesses in debris,
listens to music of sirens. More photos-
dunes of bodies, shock carved faces frozen,
denial the only survival until
memory and reality absorb. Outside the tent flaps
front end loaders scoop rubble with
an arm or head, a pair of vacant eyes.

                               Linda Buskey LeBlanc