Revisiting Zen and the Slow Earthquake—Murfin Verse

The tsunami following the mega quake off the coast of Japan in 2011 crashes ashore.  Two huge but virtually undetected powerful silent quakes preceded the cataclysm. 

Note—Four years ago today I posted this, which seems oddly even more relevant today.

Yesterday a friend’s Facebook post linked to an article on Smithsonian.com about the so-called silent quakes or slip events that preceded the enormous .9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that devastated Japan in 2011.  Being a geek for such things, I read the whole article, which was pitched to the target audience of intelligent laymen.  I got about 80% of it and am prepared to act like I understand the whole shebang.  Almost as soon as I finished reading, a dim notion formed in my mind about the powerful but unnoticed phenomena.  Half an hour later out popped a poem, a minor side effect of the stealthy grinding of tectonic plates.

In the days preceding the tsunami two powerful creeping deep quakes along the deep Japan Trench but no one on land felt or noticed them.

Zen and the Slow Earthquake

According to Smithsonian—

and who am I argue

with such lofty glossiness—

before the Big One shook Japan

a few years ago—

you  know the one

that shook like nobody’s business

for six long minutes,

unleashed a tsunami

whose water wall

swept away damn near everything,

killed tens of thousands,

and uncorked nuclear Fukushima

spewing radioactive crap

and polluting the whole damn Pacific—

before that two long, slow quakes

            crept along the Japan Trench

            under the water for days each

            as two sides of the tectonic plates

            slipped by each other in slo-mo

            like a sports replay video

            each one releasing almost as much

            energy as the big trembler

            and moving even more earth.

Yet no one on dry land felt a damn thing,

            not a one going about his or her

            humdrum business was aware,

            big wig scientists could hardly measure it

            and figured out what had happened

            only after the fact

            by pouring over printouts of data

            that no one else would ever scan.

Slip events they called them

            and said they may—or may not—

have led to the big one that

suddenly snapped things

and got everyone’s attention

and that things like that happen

along other fault lines

all over the damn world

and no one notices.

            Quiet quakes of unimaginable power indeed—

it’s like the Earth

practiced Zen.

—Patrick Murfin