My fam­ily was okay
but TVA shut the nu­clear plant down.
The tsunami in Japan was too re­cent
to take chances with such things.
The re­gion will be out of power for five to ten days.

I looked up their local news on­line
it seemed like the dam­age was on the North side of town.
I wor­ried a lit­tle, any­ways.
My par­ents were both at work that day.

No phone tow­ers con­nected us,
even the land line didn’t work.

I fi­nally thought to call my sis­ter’s fiancé
to make sure they were alive.
He lives far away.
They are con­stantly up­dat­ing one an­other.
If she could call any­one it would be him.

She fi­nally called me the week­end after the storms,
in At­lanta coach­ing vol­ley­ball
and glad to have ser­vice and power again.
Being with­out the in­ter­net was hard.

She tells every­one that I am
the most in­de­pen­dent per­son she knows.
There are un­der­tones:
I left the place we grew up, she chose to stay.

“Is it not good enough for me?”
No, the place is not,
but that doesn’t mean that they are not.
A dis­tinc­tion.

We all stay in touch, in our own ways:
Mom and I talk on the phone.
I call her when I am going on walks.
Dad and I stay con­nected through Flickr
and short emails.

I have a web­site for pho­tos and es­says.
The posts give them a sense of our life here,
our climb­ing trips and pro­jects and books.
We often jump in
right to the heart of the con­ver­sa­tion.

When the tor­na­does came
and the cords con­nect­ing all of us
went away tem­porar­ily
my heart was ten­der.

The knowl­edge that we couldn’t con­nect
any­time we felt like it:
that knowl­edge was vis­ceral.
A loss that it was hard to an­tic­i­pate
until it hap­pened.

Like New York­ers who need to know
that any­thing and every­thing is hap­pen­ing nearby,
even on nights they have take out and stay in,
I am able to live far from my fam­ily.

Any screen will con­nect us, any time.