c.1960
Consensus was anyone stupid enough
to build on the beach cliffs deserved what they got.
We shook our heads at the footage,
drove PCH to gawk the next day,
and when the TV peacock first turned color
saw how the cliff houses melted
on orange mud, like sherbet toppings
sliding off the cone. They never
slid at once – the cliff held shape,
soaking in storm, held to the last,
then exhaled, like a shift worker at quitting time.
All the ways a house came down
showed in color now, sometimes whole
but usually in parts, sometimes neatly cracked
like eggs, wealthy white sofas, carpets, curtains
spilling down the orange mud, half still clinging
gaping open for helicopters over the Pacific
to film the broken shells of California wealth and fame.
“They can afford it,” my working parents said.
“Shouldn’t have built there to begin with.”
I'd nod my head gravely, learned to have no pity.
Until the morning our suburb went to sea,
the San Andreas taking a deep breath,
brushing loose the crumbs of buildings,
buckling the famous freeways, flipping cars.
My bed, on wheels, rolled from wall to wall,
loose cargo stopped against the door,
loose cargo stopped against the door,
trapped alone at sunrise, not surprised:
The peacock showed in color now—
mudslides, earthquakes,
mudslides, earthquakes,
forest fires at Big Sur.
Maybe that night a kid in Seward
watched the news of the California quake.
Maybe some good sense farming parents shook their heads.
“Shouldn’t have built there to begin with,”
maybe they told each other.
“That’s why they call it a fault line,”
with a sense that yes, it’s our own dumb fault,
living there at all.
In Nevada, the joke is beachfront property,
when California's done sliding to the sea.
when California's done sliding to the sea.
Too bad my parents didn’t live
where people had more sense.
I might have known better, then.
April, 2012
in the month of fools
 |
| Los Angeles Earthquake, 1971 |
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