That’s Great, It Starts with an Earthquake
R.E.M. rang through our house every morning, full volume,
for at least three years. The drive to get up, get moving,
get out, filtered through the rooms. I opened door after door.
I have lost when that stopped, what non-catastrophe jarred
our trajectory. Instead of starting each day with shared song,
screaming (no, we cannot call what we did then singing),
laughing, & giggling, each child wandered off into their own
schedule. Maybe this is how the world will end. Imperceptibly
growing apart. When the walls of the Grand Canyon topple
in, when the Mighty Mississippi scores the country clear
in two, when Florida & New Orleans succumb to the salt-tides’
swift persistence, we’ll look for an earthquake but only find
after one thousand and forty-two days we, one by one, stopped
listening to the same song, in the same house, every morning.