“Two weeks on, the Earth is still vibrating from the massive undersea earthquake off Indonesia Sunday…reverberations like the ringing of a bell….” —AOL News
Two weeks on, and the planet is still
droning like struck metal. The low coastlines
shiver, waiting to be wiped away
like dust on a shelf.
On a flight the laptops deploy all around me,
played by virtuosos, but not
a single musical note. Birds do better;
the note of water dripping in a bucket after rain;
crystal clinked with a spoon to get
our attention. The drumming
of short-term thunder.
But nothing chimes like the great gong
of the heart of the globe, a seismic moan
circling out. The waters throb within us for
the next bell’s tolling, when the ocean boils
and hurls itself abroad as one more
green speeding mountain.
Luci Shaw is writer-in-residence at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia.