Faith

Awakened from deep sleep
last night by
the quiet but insistent voice of
one of nature's more mundane urges

Mundane, that is, only
as long as everything is
working correctly

I stood and remembered a photograph
from the front page of the New York Times

A laughing Haitian woman seated in a chair
with her leg missing
her face was wide open and
she held her prosthetic leg
across her shoulder, posing,
before the earthquake she
had been a dancer.

She still is.

Haiti - where every tenth person died
in a single night,
when the firm certainty of Earth
could not be found,
and the remaining nine became the
planet's resident experts
in psychological and spiritual
survival.

I thought about a governor in Pakistan
shot to death by his trusted protector
for
blasphemy.

Returning to bed, I heard the screaming
of something wild, something fierce
some animal
outside in the cold night.

What it was I could not imagine
though I tried until
finally, I fell back to sleep
trusting blindly and
without thought in
the wall that separated us.