It's every day now. Can you hear the air shake?
Several times a day those metal birds,
sharp-beaked,
slice a thin gash through
the arched canopy of blue
under which silent people walk
(or walk their dogs),
their gaze, as always, buried
in the mud,
the soft footpath,
the yellowed hay -
last year's grass
scalded by this spring's frost -
like you,
unnoticing.
The field, pockmarked by molehills,
small brownish pustules far and wide,
like a thousand
anonymous burial mounds -
something, something pushing up from below -
ashes from ashes, earth from earth,
dominions of clay, the earth's entrails
just bursting forth
while up above
the pasty clouds dissolve
in a thundering whoosh.
Barely visible now,
a dark dot in the distance,
the boom! of things inexorably changing
fills our tranquil floodplains
with its quake.
Writer Between Worlds 