In the background, a girl
wears a sunny yellow t-shirt
with a sailboat inside a heart.
I want to ask if she got the shirt
at one of Virginia’s Annual Lake Festivals.
Does she remember—
The colorful tents up and down Main Street?
The wonderful aromas of plentiful food?
The frozen drinks in souvenir coconuts?
Did she watch the fireworks on a boat?
Was she one of thousands on the bridge?
Did she get to ride in a hot air balloon?
Those events were all for the public,
but this photo is of three Privates.
Each sitting in a folding lawn chair,
like the kind we used to bring to not sit in
while watching the Beach Music Festival.
In their arms, each is holding
one of Haiti’s tiniest orphans.
The hospital is inside a tent.
Port-au-Prince has no incubators,
just aluminum foil and lightbulbs—
like what Grand-daddy used in the pens
to warm the newly hatched chicks.
The NICU desperately needs bottles.
There’s not enough milk.
Infants are lucky to have a shirt.
My heart deflates,
tears stream down my face,
as my own children merrily dance,
‘round me singing, “Row Your Boat.”
Chase City, Virginia, January 20, 2011
* * *
Tammy Tillotson lives in Chase City, Virginia with her husband and two small tireless boys. Her poetry appears in the January 2011 special themed issue of Beltway Poetry Quarterly celebrating the legacy of Langston Hughes, and also in Chopin with Cherries: A Tribute in Verse (Moonrise Press, 2010) which celebrates the 200th birth anniversary of Polish pianist-composer, Fryderyk Chopin. Poems are forthcoming in the University of Nebraska Gender Program/Women’s Center Becoming Anthology and elsewhere. For this particular poem, she extends a heartfelt thanks to M.H. for sharing her pictures of Haiti and for being just one of the many everyday unknown heroes who have worked diligently to assist in the relief efforts.
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