Landslide
The earth moved.
This was not a metaphor:
my rock became a river,
my home, my trees, my life
uprooted.
I’ve lived through storms
that peeled the paint
right off the barn.
But this was
a different storm.
The dark water rose
as it always does:
slowly, and then all at once.
I can struggle to move
a single pile of firewood
from my driveway
to the shed—
a day’s work at best,
so, I watched with horror,
and perhaps awe,
as rushing water washed
an entire forest
a mile down the road
before I could even
utter a single word.
How can something
so slow be so sudden?
How can I have faith
in the ground
beneath my feet?
The earth moved
and I am still here
surrounded by debris.
I didn’t expect to see
so much sky—
the brightness is so big
it frightens me
and I hesitate to admit,
even to myself,
that the light is beautiful.
© 2024 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD