The world reverberates, massive shock waves undulating like an ocean beneath the crust
Fragile life is thrown arrogantly aside, surging atop the awesome tempest's upward thrust

Time is relative, that which lasts but a moment may take longer to endure than a seasons change
a lifetime may be spent and lost in the vacuum between breaths, cold and cruelly strange

When disaster strikes, when all that was known becomes unknowable and forever lost
then desperate becomes the quest to return the status quo, equilibrium at any cost

Fragmented, dissolving, shattering, all that was one is destroyed and ultimately reassembled crude
Never to regain its former form, rent asunder by unstoppable power surrendered, prostrate nude

Gradually all stills, the turmoil and torment slow. No movement, no noise. Deep silence pervades
Tentatively slender ray of light illuminates the ravished scene, hesitantly lending form to darkest shades

Soft flesh becomes aware of hard stone floor, bitter cold. Trembling muscles draw unsteadily upright
But with the rising there is no relief but fresh shock as the walls fall outward as unbalanced cards might

So strength and security was naught but an illusion. Proved ultimately unworthy is that upon which we depend
Yet without trust and hope it would be hard to take a chance or imagine that darkness and pain may end

Draconian punishment sadistically created for upon searching there is nothing familiar nor safe within nor out
landscape flat and barren unrelenting in its desolation. The weight of silence crushing whisper, muffling shout

The heavy wall crash out into thick soft dust that spurts into choking clouds with each elephantine thud.
View of hope and future blurred and blocked by its rising.....red and fine..... like powdered blood.

Anji Alexander Nov 20th 2003