There’s comfort in knowing
That others care,
Complete strangers, people out there.
A weird kind of comfort when in your head
You’re alone and your loved ones feared dead.
The cameras; the stares of the caring ones
Or the ambulance watchers, press at the door
Searching for snapshots, eyes burned with tears,
Hugs of compassion, child’s shoes, charred fragments,
Black snow falling like hell’s own confetti.
This marriage of grief and unsuitable pity.
A shotgun union bound by despair
And the hunger for some sense of humanity,
Some sense that we care.
There’s comfort in knowing
Someone has your back
But weird to see your pain turn to currency;
Look at these boxes of clothes, tins of food,
Gifts from the caring, the safe ones, the lucky ones
Turned out their cupboards, the backs of their larders.
Old beans, old pasta, old tea bags, old stew.
The town criers gather like flies, like hyenas
‘Can i lift this blanket? Can I touch your tears?
Is that grease on your face? Smoke and oil from the fire?
Don’t wash it just yet. How bad do you feel? How much do you feel?
How sad are you now? Whose fault is all this? Do you have any wounds?
Where is your family? Have you lost someone? Where are your kids?’
There’s comfort in knowing, so why don’t I know?
Yes, many have died, many are missing, lives unaccounted for,
Numbers don’t tally…
But I see the eyes of the fighters descending;
The bloodshot despair beneath yellow helmets,
The tell tale streaks on their young burdened faces,
The crouch in their back, the stoop in their knees,
The weight of the horrors they’ve witnessed,
The terror they’ve seen, the suffering,
The still, black unidentified heaps, the charred fragments
The shattered dismembered shards of lives now gone.
They were there just last night so where did they go?
There’s comfort in knowing, so when will I know?
Reg Meuross June 2017
