the house rumbles
it’s 1 AM
we wake, the baby cries
we know these dark morning hours, light sleepers now
waking for a crying baby, an ancient responsibility
but this morning something older wakes us
and reminds us that the earth is moving below us
the epicenter is beneath the bay
a bay that sustained the Lummi
then cradled logging barges and fishing vessels
the Lummi and the loggers cared for crying babies
felt the earth shift too
but they didn’t know blue screens
#bellingham #earthquake
other people felt it too, he tells me
i’ve never felt an earthquake, he says
the baby is asleep again
but the earthquake is part of her story now
she lives by the ocean where the plates of the earth move deep below us
in geologic time, nothing that happens on the blue screens matters
in geologic time, if we round down, the buffalo still cover the plains
and the Lummi still paddle across the bay
Shift 