Friday, July 12, 2013

Lac-Megantic


Human error - equipment malfunction - lax regulations - corporate greed - whatever 

I hear voices and read text messages

          "let's go for an after work drink"
          "wait I'll give you a lift home"
          "I am on my way home-getting into the car now"
          "come over to ....bar, we are celebrating her birthday"
          "what a beautiful evening, let's go for a walk"

and I hear screams and footsteps of people that could not run fast enough.

Instant cremation

My heart goes out to the families.      



4 comments:

Tom said...

Your Prime Minister said it looked like a war zone. That I felt was an understatement. It was apocalyptic. You have poignantly captured the ghostly speech hanging in the air, for a little while at least. The whole incident is so difficult to grapple with, yet somehow you have touched its essence, life no longer here but still echoing, almost as if it doesn't know it.

Halle said...

This short eulogy captures so much. Thank you. I share your heart-felt shock and deep sadness for these good folk whose lives ended so abruptly and violently.

Rouchswalwe said...

How horrible. Thank you for recording these word moments for us to remember. Events as reported on the news media become ever more dehumanizing. Perhaps if corporate leaders would read eulogies like yours, they would rethink some things. Like parking trains with hazardous loads on tracks that run through small towns because money is saved by doing it that way. It's all so horrible.

Roderick Robinson said...

I seem to harp on about this a lot, but here it takes on added importance.

If you broke up the lines of this post a little more your concise poetic style would be further emphasised. Which may not be what you were after in reacting to this tragedy but beauty, especially at dark moments, helps express the collective sympathy we all share.