I listened to the reporter on the radio
interviewing volunteers who’d gone to towns
devastated by super typhoon Haiyan—
how the grim business of rebuilding
has to do with lives, not just infrastructure
even if across the channel there might be
churches open again, schools, shops, clinics.
Like nothing they ever saw, is all they can say.
Every form blown open, every home turned
inside out. A young soldier remembers
how a woman and her two children
climbed into an empty refrigerator
and paddled with their hands
through a river of debris.