Progress

“Catalyst” by Tara Baden

 

earthquakes tremble

beneath mighty mountains

the landscape evolves

rearranges lives of men

compelled to abide change

 

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“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” – Winston Churchill

 

 

From my books Ephemera and Riverthink

Cotillion

“Shattered by Earthquake” by Roy Erickson

 

we dance among earthquakes
unsure in our falter of faith
trembling graveyard our unsteady
stage roughly heaves our pale
audience come to their judgment
with lack of ghostly applause
they stone us with their eyes

 

 

From my book Pieces of Wine

Barbary Coast

“Ruins – San Francisco Earthquake” by M. DeNeale Morgan

rush of gold carried wild

down waterless rivers

terrific street flowing

with women and whiskey

beneath bawdy hills

where the bay rollers

lapping at lawlessness

gave a dull metronome

backbeat to rinky-tink

tempo of player-pianos

insistent insidious fog

smearing yellow-lit nights

giving cover to hell-raising

gamblers and gunmen

madams and mountebanks

plying nefarious trades

a geography utterly

lacking in conscience

new paths to perdition

impenitent cobbles and

insolent boardwalks

resounded with squander

of riches and character

moving unwittingly closer

to downfall to cleansing

destruction by punishing

means of calamitous

physical forces upheaval

and fire unleashed by

the terrible earthquake

of nineteen ought six

and the barbary coast

was forever no more

Ring of Fire

“Ring of Fire” by Sonja Donnelly

angry bowels

seethe magma

convulsions of

Vulcan’s own

bedrock of bones

rack the cores of

deep fundament

grinding with

slow moving

tectonic agony

altering structures

supporting existence

each uprise and fall

cataclysmic to life

clinging stubborn

and arrogant onto

the beautiful brinks

formed by indifferent

shuddering faults of

unfinished creation

Progress

“Catalyst”
Painting by Tara Beden
From fineartamerica.com

earthquakes tremble
beneath mighty mountains
the landscape evolves
rearranges lives of men
compelled to abide change

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” – Winston Churchill

Pilings

San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge
Photo at wallpapersus.com

nights glisten where torso-less legs
stand the ravage of time
and decapitation by serpentine
waves of hilled culture now
flat and serene momentarily
saline skin burnished with gold
under lights of an overhead
elegant span that will
someday be torn from its own
mighty legs where the earthquake
turns steel into shimmering rivers
that swallow up stonework and
spit back its cities in smoldering
ruins near baywaters roiled with steam
reflecting their beautiful agony