How to Talk to the Dead

A poem + commentary about the poem

There is no truth to excavate in loss. 
It is the wind hitting the side of a building
the height of a mountain.
One minute you see the stable world, 
the next it is dropping its mask to reveal its other face. 
The way fire and water can demolish whole towns in less than an hour.
The way two plates of Earth can shiver against each other,
leveling generations in minutes.  
I have seen the devastation, over and over, with my own eyes. 
I have picked up the shattered pieces, again and again, with my bare hands.
After the cleanup, I am offered kaiseki 
to prove that the ocean is still fertile, 
that it hasn’t been entirely perverted. 
Prawns’ eyes the size of grapes. 
Front porches with steps to nowhere. 
People awakening to their death drive. 
Was there once a town here? A civilization?
All I can smell is the cooking grease
rotting in the mud. Bits of shattered china and rusted keys. 
There is nothing here now. 
When I look at the tsunami videos again and again
I see a young man in an orange jacket 
unable to see death 
coming for him at 500mph.
He is my age then 
as he passes by the closed circuit camera
turning toward a home that no longer exists.
I do not know him
though I lived his life.
His future stretching endlessly before him that morning, 
and ending suddenly that afternoon. 
You can watch calamity from the stable world again and again
and never believe it will come for you.
The truth of loss is an impossibility. 
It pushes against the edge of knowledge
the way a black wave engulfs and devours.