Day 354

Pieces of flesh flying everywhere
after the explosion.  The doctor,
so near he is amazed
to still be alive, asks himself
whether he should go in
and try to rescue whomever he can
or whether a second explosion
will come and that one 
will get him.  He goes.  He knows
he cannot not go.  He finds
a man screaming under the rubble,
a bone sticking out of one leg, blood
everywhere.  My kids! he is screaming.
My kids!  Where are my children?
The doctor digs him out with his hands.
takes off his own shirt, makes it a tourniquet.
The man doesn’t stop screaming his childrens’ names.
They listen together as pieces of bodies
fall like leaves all around them
for voices the man knows.
They listen, listen.