Our house is at the crest
of a mountain formed
by a fault line that’s still
doing its work. We’re up
over five thousand feet,
and probably, slowly, the spot

that we sit on is going
to get higher and higher.
So, at some point, the house
is coming down, shaken
to bits, I suppose, and what
we’re banking on is that
we’ve chosen the right moment

in geologic time, a sweet
spot between cataclysms.
And that’s what Annie and I
hope for generally,
and what everyone seems
to want—some forgettable

moment between great wars
or typhoons or plagues–to have
timed it just right, so we’re
in just the right place between
what we read about in history
books and the moments after
which history won’t matter much.

About the poet: John Brantingham has published nearly a hundred poems in magazines in the United States and England , including The Journal, Tears in the Fence, Pearl Magazine , and The Chiron Review . Garrison Keillor recently read one of his poems on The Writer’s Almanac . He was nominated for a Pushcart prize for one of the poems in his chapbook, Putting in a Window , published by Finishing Line Press.