I Want To Wish You All A Happy New Year

I want to wish you all a happy new year.

Whether we can or should be feeling joyful isn’t clear,
Aftermath of tragedy, with so many thousands dead,
Now the whole world waits, shaken, in numbed dread.
The rising death-toll crescendos, just like that rising tide,

The Tsunami that rose and cruelly cut a swathe so wide,
Overpowering torrent that surged and sucked the breath,

Wrenched the lives from innocents, as each met their death.
Imagination can not picture what they each felt, had to face,
So many darlings lost, impossible in our lives to replace,
Houses can be rebuilt, but people can’t, they remain lost.

Young and old together taken, churned, spewed and tossed
Out to sea, bodies amongst the wreckage, floating then thrown
Up miles from where they started and the numbers have grown

And grown of dead and missing, every tortuous day and night,
Lulled falsely by fatigue, sleep alone offers a brief respite,
Locking out the sights and sounds now forever in their mind.

Are survivors really lucky? Is there any way that they will find

Hope in a future that has changed, and is now for many without
All their family, their home, their livelihood? Where there’s doubt
Perhaps for their sanity, maybe forever they have lost their way,
Physical injuries heal, but the scars etched in the mind will stay,
Yesterday will always be when they were last complete, felt whole.

Now the anguish, the anger, the heartbreak will wreak its toll.
Each person that’s affected by this ‘Act of God’, natural disaster
Will ask questions with no answers, may lose faith in God as Master.

Yet from the awful suffering, beyond the realms of understanding,
Evidence of heroes, heroines, of love and hope will be outstanding
And shine like beacons in the darkness, overcome the deathly pall,
Readers let us stand together, find strength, keep hope alive for all.