Brave the Seismic Waves
A poem for Californians
To be Californian
means to know your place on
the Pacific Ring of Fire,
and your proximity to
the San Andreas Fault line.
When the earth shakes,
it only alarms because
you didn’t know it would be today,
but you knew it would be someday.
Californians always know
the earth will quake again.
It’s part of our destiny.
This is our precious,
precarious piece
of Mother Nature.
Californians know
their homeland will see
fires and mudslides and earthquakes.
We are not oblivious
to the cracks in our foundation.
If we should choose to run,
where would we go?
The earth has other natural phenomena
we don’t know as well.
Ask us to survive
tornadoes or hurricanes
and we might not know how,
but an earthquake?
Californians have been learning
how to survive earthquakes
since we were in the womb.
Sure, they shake us up and wake us up,
but they cannot break our spirits.
If there is damage,
we will repair.
And if there is death,
we will mourn.
But we cannot succumb to fear.
Fear as in reverence, yes,
but fear as in apocalypse, no.
Why would we live that way?
Californians were
born to brave
the seismic waves.
