Tectonic Shift

I

This is her dream:

—cataclysms, the plates shift and we are

Dropping, dropping, dropping…

The earth freefalls…

Everything is rent, submerged, shipwrecked.

The continent divides,

And it is the country of Mexico that is splintered – off.

She is floating freely in this dream,

But irretrievably destroyed—

The shards of her past – obliterated.

II

All that is left is illusion.

Mexico, a new Atlantis, has emerged,

It is rising in the wide, wide Pacific.

Here is her new beginning,

Her new terrain.

All is changed then in the freefall.

The entrance and the exit ---

III

It was always like this

Flying and landing somewhere.

Yet, still adrift—

Look how she floats –

So self-contained,

Holier somehow?

Let’s see where she drifts.

What islands she encounters.

And,

If,

If,

If,

She can soon – become

Her own

Continent

© Rita Cummings 1998