༺ bucket ༻

a personality
and a landscape both
collide with the present
only after
a tortuous formation

a laval eruption
of madness
when a staightjacket
of regolith
cracks

sedimentary deposits
pressed down over millennia
into resentful mudstone

bubbling springs
of youthful joy

alluvial meanderings
of maturity

porous limestone labyrinths
carving chemical confusions

our momentary snapshots
of the character of place
take in only the surface

the kaleidoscope of time
delivers to us
just fragments
created over epochs

mica and schist
the granite of high places
brooding over memories
of a fossilised sea

ancient tectonic psychodramas
authority versus rebellion
throw up vast mountains
and arid
icy deserts

nothing could withstand
the glacier’s hydrosexual demand
for the ocean

to wear the mantle
as it is
rather than try
to remake a world
is surely
a more graceful way
to honour
its contours