A quiet earth in a restless sea
Speaks of calm and serenity
As people huddle, warm, secure,
While their air is washed,
Made clean, made pure.

But stir the earth in the midst of the fair,
Of the still, calm waters and air,
Where the storm is raging below in the ground,
While the dust is sprayed
By the turning land.

There is no shelter, no solid rock,
No steady post where we can dock,
No rope to bind us to the gentle breeze
For us, in the wind,
To take our ease.

But is there refuge in any storm
Not by another body made warm.
So, too, in the love the people send
That covers the lives
Which go on or end.

Copyright © 2010 by Carl Peter Klapper

written January 16, 2010