Saint Paul, MN
COVERAGE
A poem I wrote 30 years ago, in the days following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Oakland, October 17-19, 1989
I.
When structures already
improbably huge simply
break like some toy
they suddenly loom
like giants absurd
on the horizon
a fifty foot section
of the Bay Bridge
erector set tilt
like a garage door
said one witness closing
on eastbound traffic
on the lower deck
the ground level shots
of the upper deck
of the Cypress section of
the Nimitz
a mile to a mile and a quarter
stretch of freeway
collapsed onto the lower
slabs some 600 tons
with no right to be
so impossible to lift
to make survival
so unlikely
II.
My friend Steve
emerged from the ground floor
stairwell of
the Mills Building downtown
joking successfully
We’re the only survivors
from the tenth floor
and went off
to catch the bus home
at Candlestick the World Series
the Giants down
two games to none
the crowd cheered
initially
I jumped up from
my castered chair
to better experience
the full effect
walked barefoot across
the room looking around
at what might topple
later
watching the coverage
the power of TV
to provide desired information
images like the power
of the federal government
to provide relief which is to say
money but what
then do you do?
phoned my parents
called around and
worried about Steve
who had not
yet made it home
III.
The Marina district
of San Francisco built
poetically enough
on landfill
the hardest hit
providing most of the
standard earthquake footage
fire and in
the dawn rubble
houses fallen
into one another residents
and their possessions
gathered into
the streets and
the sightseers Pete Wilson
the Channel 7 anchor had to
become stern
you’re only getting in the way
of everything we need to
be doing there and
have the decency
to stay away
but in an unrelated segment people
are really pulling together
Pete
neither panache nor nobility
nor gross insensitivity
those who could help
did so
those with opportunity
one Charles Schwab employee
in a tie and improvised
I Survived the Big One cap
strolled collecting
suitable fragments others
one lady
dispossessed baked
in the sun for two hours waiting
for Mayor Agnos to speak but
the shelter volunteers
have been wonderful to us
those called
to heroism perhaps
achieved that end
which depended
on where you were
which next Tuesday will be
according to
Fay Vincent the Commissioner of Baseball
Candlestick again
perhaps
just a little nervous
or forgetful
or as one newscaster
on the Marina refugees
these people
have been denied the opportunity
to surround themselves
with themselves
IV.
PDS forgive
my use again
of your three line
stanza
and I needed your way
of applying a structure
to areas too vast
to be seen wholly
except by telecopter
the artificial topology
of downtown
the delineating connecting
lines of freeways and bridges
and the prone
ruin of the Nimitz
the faint patterns of streets
among houses we build
over the surface
of this world
ABOUT THE POET
Freeman Ng (www.AuthorFreeman.com) is a former Google software engineer and the author of Bridge Across the Sky, a YA verse novel based on the Chinese immigration experience through Angel Island (Atheneum Books for Young Readers); Basho’s Haiku Journeys, a haiku picture book (Stone Bridge Press); and Haiku Diem, a daily haiku feed. He’s also the co-author, with Peter Dale Scott, of Poetry and Terror: Politics and Poetics in Coming to Jakarta (Bloomsbury USA). Ripples, a picture book about gravitational waves and friendship written by Freeman and illustrated by Daniel Miyares, is forthcoming from Neal Porter Books in Fall 2027.
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