When my son asks me what is a tsunami,
I tell him it is a giant wave,
Caused by a volcano or an earthquake,
That can make the ocean floor shift and
We look it up on the computer together,
And I say things like seismic activity and
Water displacement, before he asks me
If it can kill people,
And I know he is imagining it,
Water that rises up and
Washes over cities and people,
Covering them and not letting go.
And I turn off the computer,
Turn off the television, where
There is news of a tornado ripping
Across Oklahoma, ripping a city
Into pieces, flattening it, and lifting
Cars up into the air like toys, crushing
Houses and schools, how
Over twenty people are dead,
And nine of them, they say, are children.
Later I will find my two sons in the kitchen,
Spinning in circles,
Laughing and falling down, and
I will tell them stop or how they can get hurt,
And I will think about how close they are to it,
To this world and what it can do,
How there are tornados and tsunamis
And war, and how their hearts will fill
With sadness, like blood, for cities
That they have never been to, or
How, one day, I will have to tell them,
That I have seen people fall from the sky,
And I watch them spin,
Let them keep going,
Because I am thinking
No and not yet.