b y r o n a k a n o t i |
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Water
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We love water: The salt waves, the slow rivers, the first warm showers unlocking again the color green. Without it, vegetation would not thread root systems through the earth and hold it in place. Without water there would be very few poems about going to fish or, in turn, fishing with fathers. However, water can be dangerous on land. It is what softens our whisky and, appropriately, makes our whisky easier to drink; it can damage, or destroy in three different ways: 1) It adds weight. Additional weight overburdens a slope and can cause mass movements of material. One inch of rain over one-square mile of hillside totals approximately 340,000 metric tons; this much rain can fall in a matter of minutes, and when it does the weak will fail. Essentially, a hill becomes top-heavy and gives way where something is broken underground. These faults are un-visible and grow beneath our feet. We have no good synonym for failures we cannot control: They are total. 2) It erodes. It is the constant chisel; it does its work; it never complains; it follows the rules. 3) It causes particles to slip off one another (water is, by far, the world’s most efficient—and abundant—temporary lubricant). When soil’s saturation point is exceeded, it can no longer absorb any more water; thus, particles of clay, which are shaped like plates, slip off one another when there is too much water in absorption zones. Such small movements of particles, aided by gravity, cause extremely fast-moving mudslides. Everyone who has died in a mudslide was thinking the same thing: It sounds like a locomotive coming down the mountain, and it is gaining on me. They always are. Our bodies weren’t made to outrun anything, especially dirt, not even the need for simile. |
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If you are an engineer or an architect who builds houses and buildings on stilts, you already know the risks. There are formulas. I know you are a poet, but you should know that all slopes, even imperceptible inclines and depressions (especially ones considered “stunning” or “worth treasuring”) are continually being weakened (or undercut) by weathering, deforestation, erosion, road-cuts, and mining*. Entire mountains have been stripped and re-piled into un-stable tips of loose and valueless material. But this isn’t about coal or ruined rivers. I am concerned with inevitable failures. The stability of a slope is measured by its sheer strength (see “Forces that Contribute to, or are Directly Responsible for, Mass Wasting”); this can be calculated by weighing destructive forces (see above in italics) against resisting forces such as internal material cohesion, rock density, rebar, and age. Because you are drawn to rural, suburban, and urban environments for work or subject (streets are constantly in need of repair, and severe earthquakes can level anything, so don‘t think cities are safe), you are the most at risk demographic to die as a result of sudden collapses or failures (34% of all victims last year were poets and the number is rising). By reducing the amount of time spent living in unstable zones, or predictably poor ones, poets can reduce, significantly, the likelihood of being suffocated or crushed under hundreds of metric tons of loose debris. Although the work may suffer, protect yourself—the earth does not want us. |
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First you must realize that the earth—contrary to what many of us believe, or would like to—is not a living organism: It is a sphere of, primarily, metal, gas, magma, oil, water, rock, and dirt. The hardest part to digest is momentum, this world’s un-measurable inertia. It’s like trying to bat back a mortar round with a squash racket. It’s like a baby trying to power a battleship with an eggbeater. It’s like trying to suture the San Andreas Fault with your hands. |
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BYRON A KANOTI received his MFA from Bowling Green State University in 2006 and has been published recently in The Pinch and Quarterly West. |
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