How to Feel an Earthquake

 

 

One must know their place among the bodies

on crowded subway rails,

how the bumping passengers form mosaics,

kaleidoscoping stories,

and how one is both a piece and apart,

a lone pioneer within the borders of one’s skin

 

You must learn the art

of sleeping and rising alone

to empty rooms and crowded streets,

though you may always have woken alone,

though this is a foreign clamor

looming strange and ignorant of you

For this is a new solitude

you are master of:

durable,

committed to your company

 

Sense the mazes of roads and granite tide pools

with every spin you take in grace or bewilderment,

blink at every street dog as if they were a buddha,

and praise the echo of your feet

on cold tile floors at one in the morning,

that is,

listen to the chorus of your resilience,

resonant as church bells in the plaza

gonging out over flocks of pigeons.

 

Round the corners of your soul

til the past behind is only spied

through a slanted mirror,

 

Free fall into the vastness of the present

There is no time

for things like

parachutes or warnings,

for soaring is falling

at the mercy of your own gravity.

 

Sink to your core,

though your knees ache with the ascent.

 

Do this, my friend,

 my self,

 and the earth will tremble with you.

SAR.

19 September 2015

El Quisco, Chile