Fault--Finding

Fault-Finding


Even now the ground is slowly shifting
beneath your feet. Even now
zones of weakness are building
behind your back, ready to crack
into fractures. Even now pressures
may exceed the power of rocks
to resist. Think of it:
thousands of faults lace this region.
You live inside a ring of fire
where walls can loom up overnight.
Forces in this landscape
are trying to rearrange your world.
You stand here feeling
you can control nothing,
at any second it is you
who may be heaved up,
and broken.

Copyright © Mary Crow
—first published in I Have Tasted the Apple
BOA Editions, Ltd., 1996

—reprinted in the anthology
The Forgotten Language:
Contemporary American Poets and Nature
University of Iowa Press, 2002.
Posted over on Mary Crow's Blog