Earthquake, By SUZANNE LUMMIS

Whole neighborhoods

will begin traveling like lemmings,

mine first.

Meanwhile, I go through this city

achieving, at some cost, these poems.

I’ve done what they say I’ve done

or else I invented it,

which was almost as taxing.

So at night when the house settles

I half fly out of bed,

then lie awake reasoning with the earth:

I’m too old to die!

If it was going to happen at all

it should have been years ago,

before all this started.

From “Idiosyncrasies” (Red Wind Books: $8; 65 pp.). Lummis is one of this city’s greatest supporters of poetry. Among other things, she organizes the L.A. Poetry Festival every year. Her most recent collection is “Falling Short of Heaven,” from Pennywhistle Press in San Francisco.

1989 by Suzanne Lummis. Reprinted by permission.