Earthquake in a Not-so-distant Land
I had almost finished writing a post about picnics, but nature intervened and I’m saving that draft for another time. Nature threw me a new subject in the form of an earthquake. We didn’t feel it here, but as a California native I know what they feel like well enough and I pay attention. We were just in Nepal last month. 
One requirement of our Indian visas is that we exit the country every six months and then re-enter and have our passports stamped, so we flew from Delhi to Kathmandu and then returned the next day. We didn’t take many photos there, but this shrine in an old part of town was striking. I doubt those watchful eyes have been much comfort to the suffering Nepalis.
I was reminded of another one of Mary Oliver’s poems, called “Beyond the Snow Belt.” I’ll put a link to the whole poem at the end of my post. Here’s how it starts:
Over the local stations, one by one,
Announcers list disasters like dark poems
That always happen in the skull of winter.
But once again the storm has passed us by…
She goes on to describe how the storm is far enough away that it doesn’t affect peoples’ daily lives, so they stop thinking about it and go back to their normal routines. The poem ends like this:
I only say, except as we have loved,
All news arrives as from a distant land.
The disaster may be on the other side of the world or it may be in the next county—if our hearts are touched, it seems close by. 
We weren’t in Nepal long enough to make any real friends, but I remember the small woman in the shop who sold me yak wool scarves—a narrow shop on the ground floor of an old brick building. I think of the manager of the hotel we stayed in, who had been part of an expedition to Mt. Everest. And of the young waiter who helped us decide what to order for lunch, in that restaurant on the second floor of a tall, cement-block building. One consequence of living the kind of globe-trotting life we have is that there are now people we love in so many parts of the world that news from almost anywhere touches our hearts. Shortly after we heard news of the earthquake, my cousin wrote to ask if we were safe, and I replied that we were far away from the quake zone and weren’t affected. But Kathmandu isn’t quite such a “distant land” to my heart… what about yours?
Beyond the Snow Belt:
http://www.best-poems.net/mary_oliver/poem12165.html
Posted in Uncategorized and tagged earthquake by Lisa