Poem: When it happens to you

When it happens to you, it’s like a horrific dream.
It’s like watching a natural disaster newscast on TV
and the victim has your name.
No roof for shelter, no clean or rainwater to drink,
no dry clothes to wear.
Rooms flooded with wet debris
and the realization that a wall or door has disappeared.
The kitchen ceiling has a gaping hole;
your life is spiraling out of control.
You are left to pour water from a muddy cup
in order to attempt to flush the toilet bowl.
Now that all of the batteries are dead,
a candle and a match are your evening friends.
It seems that the musty wet smell of dirty clothes
and rotten grocery will never end.
Air condition on your skin and ice on your lips
seems like a distant memory.
Your emergency rations are eaten sparingly by family
and you are always hungry.
The windows are shattered;
the stench of sewage and the buzzing mosquitoes enter at will.
Everything your insurance and credit cards won’t cover
adds to a rising astronomical bill.
Where do you go when the dinner table is your bed,
when you aren’t able to bathe for another week?
Do you blame God or an act of God
for making your world seem so bleak?
When you have nothing but the clothes on your back,
do you feel any shame?
When it happens to you and the face on TV has your name.
So give graciously to someone else in peril my fellow Bahamians
because this poem could have been about you.
Thank God for sparing you and your family
and to yourself and countryman be true.

By Sean Ruize Munnings
The Raga-Lover

Copyright © 2006 Sean R. Munnings, all rights reserved.