Searchers

We gave our dogs a button to sniff,   

or a tissue, and they bounded off   

confident in their training,   

in the power of their senses   

to recreate the body,   

but after eighteen hours in rubble   

where even steel was pulverized   

they curled on themselves   

and stared up at us   

and in their soft huge eyes   

we saw mirrored the longing for death:   

then we had to beg a stranger   

to be a victim and crouch   

behind a girder, and let the dogs   

discover him and tug him   

proudly, with suppressed yaps,   

back to Command and the rows   

of empty triage tables.   

But who will hide from us?   

Who will keep digging for us   

here in the cloud of ashes?