The way the building shook itself
free of our shapes
until my workplace was gone
and your friends were gone,
until the new city was swaddled in smoke,
taught me to fear the ground.
To fear the eyes and bones
of a brooding father,
with me the child (again), waiting
and wondering if today
is the day when he huffs, and puffs,
and blows our house down?
But a long walk in the park,
surrounded by summer oaks,
reminded me that it was us
who built churches on top of fault lines,
and when the earth rolled over
in its deep dreaming,
we asked, what did I do to deserve this?
We ate poisonous hearts and vomited
ghosts onto our bedsheets
and cried, what did I do to deserve this?
We dripped nightmares into rivers
and longing for whitebait, for water,
we moaned, what did I do to deserve this?
We started wars and buried bullets in neighbours
and when they fired back,
we demanded, what did I do to deserve this?
We chased the shamans and witches
who spoke with moss, with mountains,
to the edges of the woods,
and burned them,
and when the ground heaved with
unknown languages, and all the chimneys fell,
we whispered, what did I do to deserve this?
Meanwhile,
the elder trees are pregnant with
late summer berries,
the streams chuckle through Hagley Park,
full of eels and spells,
and the mayflies flit about, light with games,
never wondering why, sometimes,
the earth moves.
