Matthew Hayden Raue

Smaller Settling

Tonight in the house
in the rain,
my brother and I watched
You Tube video
after video
of the tsunami in 2004.

On Boxer’s Day that year
twenty feet of ocean swallowed
two hundred thousand friends and enemies
outright.

What light-footed little prints we make.
What noble erections we hold out against

the ocean of all time.

That was only a smaller settling.

This unlikely flutterby of a green Earth,
does not stop to furnish catastrophe.

Matthew Hayden Raue lives in Northern Westchester, New York and works full time at a rock climbing gym owned by his father. He graduated last May from St. Mary’s College of Maryland with a degree in English and a minor in Asian studies. A year ago he spent six months in India, and it was very, very crazy.