Black Lives Matter?

 

Nature´s mighty arm moves with unstoppable power

Winds erratic and forceful sweep all before it

This momentum of intense movement, a prelude to a cleansing rain

which thunders down as mighty bullets

to saturate an earth already quenched

A landscape soaked, no longer firm

gives way as a hillside dislodges itself

Moving mud slides inexorably forward and down

a cascade which carries with it all in its path

Trees, gardens and the homes of many are taken

as if by a giant hand to a valley below 

where all came to rest

 

Few witnessed this colossal and calamitous shift 

as night concealed its course and strength

Under darkness and silence it carried those who slept

to a dark quagmire of eternal rest

In the early light of dawn all was laid bare

A tragedy with hundreds of souls

compressed into an unsuspecting grave

a deluge of destruction, death and incomprehensible grief

 

The world saw this human tragedy as government and charities

cried out for aid

Once ebola, now this - Sierra Leone´s litany of catastrophe

nature´s unremmiting cruelty

The event achieved a newsworthy slot on the national TV screens

Impotent viewers, detached, looked on

as mothers cried for their buried young

and men dug with bare hands for their

families and few possessions

 

Across the ocean a hurricane of phenomenal strength 

hit the Texan Coast of the USA with great ferocity

Federal funds were immediately released

people evacuated as wind and rain reeked havoc again.

Down graded to a tropical storm the death toll stood at 2

Hurrican Harvey had received almost continuous news coverqge

for several days

Sierra Leonne now lay forgotten

as hundreds of bodies from their muddy graves

were exhumed

to be buried once more

and the world moved on