THE WANDERERS

After the earthquake a woman insists
that everything has settled down but the ground,

and that she knows what to save and how to do it.

From station to station on my radio,
all afternoon, she wanders in and out of the news:

not a tree or flower in her yard has lost its balance,

while down at Divinity's the French chocolates
were uninsured, as was an antique jade vase

that landed in a heap. By evening on TV

her withered voice attaches itself
to the face and little laughs of this woman

who tries hard to carry on with certainty.

I turn off the news, roll over to sleep
in my own cracked kingdom:

the ground a hard glaze, wind full of tremors.

I skid through a mountain pass while behind
trek a diminutive tribe of the strangely familiar,

all careful to step only where I do.

Like something forgotten,
my feet are the saviors we look to

to lead us out of this high-goat world,

Ice fields shine on every side
as a bear skull appears, mouth wide

with yellow teeth. Then the ribs appear,

pressed into the cliff like a creature flattened
in the freeway tunnel.

Oh, city bear, I call, poor lost fossil.

First published in The Journal