Pandemic Poems for Us All #7: Faults

Found Poem asking this: if we are truly quieter, what do we hear? Based on notes taken from an article by Robin George Andrews in the New York Times

Faults

the anthropogenic hiss of us

has for years masked

words made by our tectonic plates 

the planet’s shifting terrains

now in our collective wills

not just the neighbors

but the millions who have

hunkered down

seismometers hear and record

a lexicon of earth

clearer in this time of human

quiescence than before

now that cacophonous rhythm

of morning rush is gone

all the hullabaloo we make  

faded like a fog 

the natural quaverings made

more aloud

scientists agog hear even Earth’s

restless breath

detect the creak of our most

dangerous faults

listen to the lessons

of the fissures