"She Quakes" is the first contribution in what is intended to be a fruitful link with the New Zealand Poetry Society. This poem is particularly poignant as Tynebard was in Christchurch in December 2010 during the series of earthquakes, two more significant ones of which struck there recently.
SHE QUAKES
Earth groans,
her trembling begins,
her tectonic plates shift.
Ground cracks and leaps,
burping sludge bubbles upwards,
locked energy, released in a noisy belch.
Her movement, restrained for centuries,
escapes, in a series of sideway jolts,
stretching her reach, testing her strength,
- she quakes.
On her surface, green and warm,
above her inner heat and energy,
small creatures scatter.
Constructions
collapse
topple
and pancake
to the ground.
The creatures are crushed,
cut and burnt.
Gases escape and ignite.
Rivers seek new paths,
waste and water break free.
Blocks of stone fall from
where man has put them:
heaped on her surface,
broken, disorderly.
Bells of iron shout as they fall.
Still stretching and moving,
she continues to quake,
seeking a new position to rest in.
Deryn Pittar (deryn@xtra.co.nz)
