Every year since 1990,
on the 16th of July we float
paper offerings and flower boats
on the lake and ring the church
bells at half past 4, remembering
the earthquake that struck
our mountain city in the north—
how in its aftermath we pulled
the dead out of fallen buildings
and stacked them three deep
on the roadsides, how the only two
funeral parlors in town ran out
of coffins. We counted my father among
the dead, though it was his heart
that succumbed a few days after
the temblors. No matter what
the cause— pinned under broken
hotel pillars, buried in a bus
under a mountain avalanche, crushed
in the ordinary rubble of our damaged
homes— we knew Death as a mouth
that yawned awake in the bowels
of the earth and then went foraging.
For days and days, we followed
the stench of where it was last
seen. Flies led rescue parties down
to sightless pockets where bodies
slumped beyond the reach of trackers
and machines. We saved what could be
saved, hoisted the living back into
the world— until it tired of us and left,
its shadow dark as buzzard wing.