One Hundred Flowers

Yestermorning
I find myself here
again
in the land of the sun.
My life's passenger cups my
ears and tongue kisses my
tardy brain with bell ringing
permanence and certainty.
The one marriage
built to last;
my ringing ears and I.
The radio sheep-bleats
come into focus.
Further down the rim
from this bed
one hundred flowers
were pressed into
the flat earth's
scrapbook.
The radio chalkboard scratches
out field notes
on a function of
friction and gravitation.
A neutral event
reaches out
to cradle loss
and tragedy.
"We were sitting in an office
and heard what sounded like a truck
passing
before the shaking started."
The radio transmits me
translated into english
straight to me
right between the eyes.
We live on the rim.
We shouldn't forget
the ground is floating.
I remember.
It came from the south
and sounded like a rusted
dumptruck dragging a chain
of inescapable dread.
It passed right through
the classroom.
Above and below.
Then the ground
broke it's promise
to be the floor,
to hold up our feet,
to be where we left it.
It wasn't there.
Gravity
helped us find it,
inches that seemed like miles
below where
it slept for so many years.
The walls can't keep their
promise either.
They vomit shelving
and the tambourine ring
of breaking things
accompanies
primate panic
manifested in God's toys
shrieking under
swaying light fixtures.
But stepping out of
the unsound
and into the open
underneath
impassionate clouds
I saw tidal energy
animate the ground
in waves of beautiful
rhythm
and I fell in love
with everything.