This is the anniversary of the Mexico City Earthquake, 1985; magnitude 8.1. Hatch and I with our dogs Pepper and Sardy – along with 11 other U.S. dog/handler teams and two technical mine rescue teams – spent 5 days searching the rubble for survivors. Several other nations sent disaster dog teams and other rescue resources. Here’s a poem from years ago:
Mexico City Earthquake, Years Later
Without a camera
the images keep developing
in my mind. Black on white very fast film,
a picture for the least exposure.
When the earth stopped shaking,
concrete – the stuff we trusted, walked and
built on – stuffed in our nostrils, dust
like the smell of death we thought we’d strangle on.
Without a camera, the mind
takes pictures. It’s the focus that shatters.
Broken arms reaching for air. Topsy-
turvy toilets dangling from a floor.
Mirrors that shatter a face to smithereens.
It didn’t seem to matter how
they died. Three days later they all smelled
the same. The same sad look that rescuers redeem
later, over many words and promises
comrade to comrade who walked together
out of death alive.
The camera, like memory,
mostly lies. A hand reaching for another hand
is hard to keep in focus after the light shifts
and the shadows.
~ Taylor Graham
from Casualties: search-and-rescue poems (Coal City Review)