Tsunami: The Animals

Not very many animals died. The human beings, sucked
out of their windows, plucked from one another's arms, may
have heard the trumpeting of elephants, may have seen
flamingos group and leave for inland forests, boars and
monkeys heading for a higher ground. Do even fish that
swim in grand aquariums of restaurants where we eat
the flesh and organs of clairvoyants on some 87th floor
detect the tremor we don't feel until we crash through
ceilings in a fall of rubble upside down, a fork impaled
in an eye? Are the creatures then an ark? Noah, no one knows.
Does the trunk laid flat upon the earth before a trumpeting
begins detect an earthquake or tsunami in the human heart
as well as movement of tectonic plates, approaching footsteps
of a man who'd rather be a bomb? A flood, a flash of
detonation. Caged canaries in our common mine
burst through bars in song. High in heaven's Yala,
water buffalo are shaking off the waters of the world's woe.

- from Kedging by John Matthias