Slip

Slip

in memory of my sweet Holly Ann

An oboe whimpers to the tune of an erupting
fault, its wooden tube
an understatement of that event
like it was 1960; May in Valdivia, Chile,
but that’s just the nature of the beast.

Ninety-five pounds lay incorporeal,
the content is what’s missing.
No less tangible than the raven’s song itself,
liturgically ranting;
a greeting in the kindest of words.

Here, Mercalli couldn’t begin to calculate
flesh as it drips from a telephone pole, burning
to say good-bye
or caput mortuum hair  saturated in the blood of a little girl.
Catastrophic isn’t close.

At least she was sleeping, content in four-doors
when those tires hissed with a vengeance
and a disregard for gravity.
When tectonic crusts collided, she was a second thought.
Those narcissistic bastards

had a better idea of composure,
her asthenosphere too brittle,
                                              too weak.