In every sale a list of ways your home
could be destroyed: flood, poison, earthquake, fire.
You must assert you have considered toxins,
understand the risks lodged in tectonic plates.
You may lodge downwind of breezes
off oil fields, refineries, or croplands.
Your world may end in fire or rain of golf balls.
Still, signing below this fine print allots you
your postcard plot of golden state.
Will the soil be cancerous? God willing not to you.
Your new house is younger than your mother.
No one can say what karma rules this place.
At your bottlebrush are native hummingbirds.
In your shed, provisions for the big one.
Above you the 200-year-old redwood waits.
In redwood years, this tree’s a baby.
It overlooks your fragile real estate.