The Earth seems to slip there,
That strip of hills
Stretching from Idaho south
To the Great Salt Lake.

A silent lonely expanse,
Seldom farmed now,
Nearly devoid of homes--
Roadless in winter.

The big shake was in the Twenties:
Mother tells of terror in
The old Collinston School;
The ground split wide in Hansel Valley.

And the Malad quake
That shook us in the Seventies,
I still see the panic
Of people on campus at Weber.

And the many subtle rumblings
That summer I worked
On my Masters: fruit jars chattering
In the cool of the basement.

And the time we thought
The bleachers had collapsed,
And the early morning shake
When the library was new.

And now today in Fifth Period:
I missed it--collecting papers,
But there were those who felt
Our foundations tremble.

Strange that when the Earth speaks,
We listen and remember,
As though some silence were
Suddenly broken by the gods.

02/01/2008

Author's Note: 3.5 magnitude; four miles west of Riverside, Utah

Posted on 02/01/2008
Copyright © 2024 Leonard M Hawkes