Quaking

Surely there was some mistake!
This couldn’t really be a quake!
I know one person – not a joke –
Who thought he’d suffered from a stroke.

But no, the experts did unveil
5.8 upon the Richter scale,
With tremors up and down the coast;
Virginia seemed to get the most.

New Yorkers seemed the most surprised.
We haven’t been familiarized
With quakes like this since ’44,
And this one we could not ignore.

For many, ‘twas a brief distraction,
With surprise the main reaction.
Life returned to normal, fast;
Could-have-been thoughts do not last.

Yet we think of others struck
Who didn’t have our same good luck.
Nothing really quite predicts
How Mother Nature gets her kicks.