Darren J. de Leon

Prayer of San Andreas Fault

O’ Glorious San Andreas,

the archbishop of fault lines

enters the earthquake

of apostolicity.

 

We bow our heads,

run beneath the nearest arch,

post online before

your shake ends.

 

You were the first, San Andreas.

You will be forever St. Andrew,

second apostle,

brother of St. Peter,

fisher of men,

crucified and displayed in Patras,

recognized and followed

by the Lamb of God.

 

Your direction as simple as a coastland break

Point Delgada

to Point Arena,

Point Reyes,

Daly City,

and inland through Berdoo.

 

We shake as you sing in unity

of the striking of two plates,

a plowed lateral slip

that rocks the State.

 

Your protection is now called upon.

 

As you split ranch fences

plot new maps,

gapped for slumbered souls

left behind on desert crosses,

 

we ask you to protect

the quiet fisherman,

the twisted rope-makers,

humming textile workers,

dark miners,

dusty campesinos,

bloody butchers,

plump pregnant women,

gifted soul singer,

and huddled hands in hospitals.

 

Bless the igneous people

the locus,

the ganglion magnitude,

the inflex of grandeur,

the seismic creep,

the stirred and shaken apocalypse,

the bodily convulsion,

the throated fevered mouth,

and the earthly whooping cough.

 

As your fault sleep

we find your vibration foreign,

make your grumbles holy,

beatify your veins of talc,

glorify the exalted flight of angels,

consecrate your magnitude,

divine your tectonic plates.

 

Teach us to drop and cover,

read the Richter scale,

and surrender us to you

in water service

and canned survival.

 

May we learn

the lesson of the magnitudes,

and to carry thirtyfold

without complaint

so that we may

dip ourselves in the rubble

at the end

of your majestic dance.

~ Darren J. de Leon
A TRANSMEDIA INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION 
& ARTIST COLLABORATION by Jacalyn Lopez Garcia


Poem by Darren J. de Leon
Music by DjR3X
Photography by Jacalyn Lopez Garcia
< BACK to CyberGALLERY