A Survivor Thinks of Friends After a Natural Disaster

The Drowned and the Saved ~ Paolo Levi

Catastrophe's cold hand cannot be judged;
results are everything there is to see.
I live to tell it, hear the requiem,
a traffic dodging wide boy who got through.

By index finger, middle finger, ring
finger, little finger, thumb, I tap
an anthem beat by note or beat by word,
marking time and syllable by hand

as though a hand could make it safe by holding.
As if by counting into form I might
put all the pieces back into the box
or make a way to speak, to try to talk

into a sludge trap of departed souls:
I see them always waving, always drowning.