Poems by Ben Boegehold
Archives: by Issue | by Author Name
O Terremoto
by Ben Boegehold
Ben lives near a little creek on a mountainous island in the Gulf of Maine.
In the dining room, the innkeeper’s infant son plays on the floor while the old lawyer from the mainland sits at the breakfast table. He speaks Portuguese to the innkeeper, who busies himself with the eggs and coffee, the bread. They switch to English when they see us enter and the old lawyer tells us about the time he visited his cousins in New Bedford. “Do you feel safe living in the States?” he asks. “On the TV everyone seems to have a gun, and everyone is shooting each other.” The innkeeper hands us a book of photos documenting an earthquake that hit the island thirty years before. We examine the wreckage: black and white pictures of stone and stucco buildings reduced to rubble, cracked tiles and mangled cars, field hospitals on the beach. “This whole island,” the lawyer says, gesturing over his juice and coffee. “It’s one big volcano.” The innkeeper smiles, scraping eggs onto a plate. He points through the window at the green mountain rising above the courtyard. “One day,” he says, “It will go boom.” A stray dog paws at the screen door. Even as we look, low clouds from the ocean shroud the peak. The innkeeper’s son shrieks with delight.
© Ben Boegehold