Poem by Bruce Wise

An Earthquake Near the Town of Liberty
by Ubs Reece Idwal

A magnitude 4.3 earthquake rumbled underneath
the Cascade Mountain Range in Washington, at 1:04,
on February 18, 2015, just northeast
of the town of Cle Elum and northwest of Ellensburg,
near Liberty, where th’ actual ground shaking was no more
than sixty microns, or, about a piece-of-paper’s width.
The earthquake wasn’t large, and none were harmed or injured there.
It hardly made the news, nor will it likely turn to myth.
It’s not noteworthy, since no one was left with hurt…despair.
And yet, is not that better than what violence attends—
since bad news is so typical—and good routine transcends?

Photography © Allison Goldin

Bruce Wise: “The author of this poem is Ubs Reece Idwal, my Pacific Northwest anagrammatic heteronym.”

Ubs Reece Idwal is a poet of the Pacific Northwest, not a Midwest transplant, like Theodore Roethke or William Stafford, and is an intimate not only of Bud “Weasel” Rice, the nature poet, and Urbawel Cidese, the lover of metropolises, but also universalist R. Lee Ubicwidas.

Allison Goldin is an artist living in California. Her work is a collection of spontaneous drawings from the imagination. The most common link throughout her art are the semi-recognizable creatures scattered amongst and bringing together the surrounding doodles.