Earthquakes in Oklahoma

You played in our dirt until
There were earthquakes in Oklahoma.
The window of your airplane
That often tiger-striped our star-filled skies,
Framed your yawning face as you pointed a single finger down
Indicating to The World where he could pound his greedy fists.
Every bird felt the tremor and joined you
In flight, harkening to the ancient instinct
That saved them once before when a tyrannosaur
Gasped and fell in that very spot.
Don't let the lie of your well-meaning resourcefulness
Turn your head away from what happens
With every violent chip at the crust:
You're loosening the fossil caves beneath our highways,
Rattling the bones of Tulsa's mass graves,
And stirring up the buried
Arrowheads in children's backyards.
We, too, are waiting for the rapture,
Yours,
That is coming from below when
The Earth smiles like the snake she is
And swallows you whole.
Me and mine pray to be left behind,
Whispering as we calmly stroke her back to sleep.

Kimberly Zerkel is a freelance writer based in San Francisco, although I currently call Joplin, Missouri home. Her essays have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and Heated; her fictional work has appeared in Isthmus, Dual Coasts, The Meadow, and Z Publishing's California's Emerging Writers.