In the Aftermath

July and

four days of monsoon rain

Mudslides on the edge of town

Roads washed out

Splintered pines crisscross

piled earth and smashed houses

An upturned car

Lives         

  laid bare

At the bar

“Did you find that last guy?”

Backhoe operator

indicates an arm

Weeks later ambling

a disused logging road

in the hills

uprooted trees

beneath slumped hillsides

and caking plains of slough

and debris where momentarily

a trickle turned raging flow

Clamber over downed

pines and beaten slopes

scooting slides

A quiver

of something

wrong

Press on

through nature’s gate

The whole Earth ground

under Shiva’s heel

His bedeviling grin

Hundreds of tender shoots

rising in the

still drying mud

****************

As appeared in Written River