You collected outcasts with hearts of broken glass, promising to fill their cracks with gold, but you made a grave mistake with me. My heart is not a fragile piece of blown glass – it is a chunk of volcanic glass, deep black obsidian, and when it breaks each shard is sharper than a surgeon’s scalpel. I was never an outcast, you see. Outcasts yearn to be told their worth yet I inherently knew mine, for I had been born and tempered in the earth’s deep fires where no mere man may survive. I loved you, yes, and I believed in you, but I did not need you like the others and thus was the first to see through you when my rebellious edges drew your blood and then your anger. It’s no wonder you could never fix those broken hearts you hoarded; without one of your own, how could you know how the pieces fit together?



We anthropomorphize what we do not understand and deify what we fear. Perhaps, therefore, I should call this terror and awe Cascadia and give it a name, a form, a realm to rule. Grand Cascadia, She Who Slumbers Uneasily, She Who Builds Mountains and Destroys Cities. Ancient Cascadia, who sleeps beneath the earth’s crust and whose every toss and turn rattles the land above. Cruel Cascadia, whose laughter stirs tsunamis, whose anger detonates stratovolcanoes and sends shockwaves of destruction through two thousand miles of rock and earth. I see her body made of the fine silt of the ocean floor; her eyes glow the hot white of magma; her hair is ash and smoke and seaweed and minerals. She is a uniquely Pacific Northwest goddess, one link in the great ring of fire through which she and her sisters transform the world.

It is tempting, I’ll admit, to hand the fear of what I cannot control over to a deity I can at least implore. I could light red candles in her honor and leave her offerings of seashells, saltwater, Mt. St. Helens ash. Beneath her altar I could store flashlights and emergency rations. I could write songs and poems for her, about the people she has killed already and those she will kill in the future. I could, I could, I could – but what good would it do? Even if Cascadia were a true goddess, she would not be swayed by offerings or pleading. She would be something more terrifying than Kali and more uncontrollable than Sekhmet, something that gloried in death even more than Inanna or the Morrigan. There would be no appeasing her. She would only sleep, wake, slaughter, and sleep to wake and kill again. All the prayer in the world could not reckon with her, and when she next wakes her death toll will be in the hundreds of thousands.

Sleep, Cascadia. Sleep.


yesterday the anger was
a molten core, pressure building
praying for eruption

today the depression is
a granite pluton hard and cold
yielding to erosion

maybe Yellowstone will redeem us
before we can do too much damage;
you know, wipe the slate clean, hit restart on
this whole “life” business

foolish man, to think nature
does not always hold the trump card;
they ignored the signs in Pompeii too
but hey, at least they’re famous

turn to geology on your deathbed
it is the only science that can save you



and can neither be created nor destroyed

or perhaps drag me deep beneath its melting crust

either way I will transform, become a mountain once again
I will welcome that change as I welcome yours


all is
the earth awakes
in violent tremors, roaring
cacophonous subterranean thunder
buildings swaying
bridges buckling, overpasses shuddering
concrete crumbles
brick collapses in clouds
of red dust like the skies of Mars
glass shatters and power lines topple
while beachfronts slough off into white-capped water
and it seems to go on forever, minutes becoming an eternity
while the world shakes and quakes and destructs
like nothing Chicken Little ever could
have expected, the sky is falling
the sky is falling
and in the aftermath
nothing is untouched or
unharmed and yet
the earth
still manages
to go


grain of
sand is pushed
upward by the wind
and joins its fellows to
form a great desert sand dune
which in time turns to bright sandstone
all reds and golds and oranges
which in time weathers down
from wind and rain
to a single
grain of
grain of
sand is pushed
upward by the tide
and joins its fellows to
form a beach and then hills
which in time are pushed into mountains
looming tall above the ocean shores
which in time weather down
from wind and rain
to a single
grain of


you don’t have to be afraid
but at least be respectful
there is fire beneath your feet
and enough coiled tension to move Earth itself
the same water that sustains all of life
can also wipe it away in a surging wall
the mountains sleep, but are not dead
the ground is still, but hardly static
and nature is never tamed
only quiet between catastrophes
you don’t have to be afraid
but at least be prepared