Seconds ticked on (two, five),
offices no longer safe,
my window bowing like plastic (ten),
I needed shelter (fifteen),
spotted a desk across the hall,
dove underneath, someone already there,
a large woman filling the entire space;
my head by her bottom (twenty),
sprinklerheads falling from the ceiling,
when it ended (twenty-three) we giggled.
Later my little family unhurt,
our house undamaged, just power out.
We put our candles away and
headed for my parents’ small apartment,
my extended family, two by two by two.
Perhaps I knew then, watching my mother,
her party self after cocktails,
and my dad, temporary patriarch.
Perhaps I knew he would die, soon,
with as little warning as an earthquake.
He found this never-used two-foot flashlight
and together we inserted batteries.
I enjoyed a wonderful well-fathered moment
as it shone its first light
in this emergency explicable to anyone.
But soon the aftershocks started,
damned things, more earthquakes really, and
reports, how close we’d come to complete ch/ao/s,
people building new foundations under old houses,
and new shaking, day or night.
Whatever we were doing, we’d run to the children,
hold them, then, quick, turn on teevee.
Where’s the epi-center? What’s the Richter reading?
The next week a friend called saying
children from alcoholic families
were particularly hard hit. I said not me,
I’m ok/ay.
Kevin Arnold
