Again

 

The testament of geologic scars layered in blown sand and silts
and ancient muds, holds the fossiled record of the long before.

Oh, the written muds. Progeny of water and stone.

Recorders of the past, Earth’s humble history pages.

Grand peaks and trenches, mighty dips and fractures within a plated crust
undergird the fractional soils we dig and scratch upon.
We beings mere birds at our continuous dust bath. Fluttering over and again.

 

Rock and water live on and on in eternal lives
while the lapping “we’s” of the world in all our might and industry

so slightly sculpt the thin soil. Tilling

and plowing our faint, fleeting ripples here and there.

 

The highest peaks have been laid low to the deepest seas
only to be vulcanized and thrust upward once more,

along spreading ocean-ridges, mountaintops or in island births anew.

 

Fissured cracks and dikes that flowed with molten stone,
cooled and re-smelted with golden veins and crystals

grown cavern-deep, segregated, in their sparkling prismatic skin.

Aged blue glaciers patiently gather the bounty from the clouds, and in

their slow incremental journey, return it to the sea. Reunited oceans

rise up to fall afresh, to flow and freeze, to re-carve the land, and deny drought.

Blowing and sprouting and rooting legions of slumbering natal seeds.

 

Countless caves weep with earthly seeps. Water with aged potter’s hands,

drawing down and gathering up the dripped precipitated change.
These drips have shaped our lands, washed our faces, greened our crops, only

to return and cool, and slake our unrelenting, biologic, thirsty needs again.

 

Rivers bear ice-melt, rain, and mountain alike, carefully and slowly back to the seas.

The very water in our cup has seen, has witnessed and bathed kings and nomads,

and hosted the first sparks and birth of life, only to fall upon it all endlessly again.

 

I have wondered in a whisper with myself,
which formidable element of change reigns supreme?



Stone, the so impressive, erupted from volcanoed cones,

graven god, temple wonders, cities, poured and graveled roads,

dams and mountains high, to the stacked layers cut in canyons low

or the water dripped like clock ticks, in falling rain, calving bergs, maelstrom,

tide or tidal wave and rivers-run with its relentless, tireless tongue,

slowly licking the mountains down to naught?

Both sit among the lofty seats of change, but there is one other that sets the course;

One that beats out the pace, beats out each step and crack, counts each layer and drip.

Time demands patience and is the maestro whose baton will say or not, yes, “again.”