
Window #1
Poesía
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