with an event this MASSIVE... it sometimes takes a detail

[nostamj]

to bring it into a focus that one can embrace.

this was SO true of 9/11, esp. if you were in NYC. it was TOO big, TOO incomprehensible, and THEN you saw all the flyers, all the missing individuals... and then there was a scale you could embrace, could just weep over.

and so, I was watching the CNN coverage and heard this little bit about a 4yo that spent two days in a tree... 4yo. and, it just hit me very hard. esp. knowing that there are 100s of thousands of inviduals just as affected in their very unique and personal way.

I'm not ready to write about the event as a whole, and may never want to touch it. but, on a smaller scale...


a four year old boy survives for two days in a tree following the Indian Ocean tsunami

Two days in a tree–
This is not the world I knew.
I am four years old.

Where is the sea's smell?
Dead rats make a stink like that.
I am four years old.

I am four years old.
She always had time for me.
Tell her I'm not lost.

Two days in a tree–
I thought I heard birds crying,
But heard friends crying.

Tell her I'm not lost–
After two days in a tree,
Now, I'm in a bed.

I am four years old–
And I can only tell them
The name I answer to.

I am four years old–
Should I smile for the bright lights?
Do I have more tears?

Tell her I'm not lost
And surround me with cousins
While I'm in this bed.

It stinks, underneath.
Outside of the room, rats rot.
Where's the sea's smell?

Two days in a tree–
This is not the world I knew.
I am four years old.