Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Geosonnet 16

The strontium which weathers from the land
Is held by teeth and shells beneath the waves
Their creatures live, then die, interred in sand
with isotopes in stratigraphic graves.
The greatest dying Earth has ever seen
Initiated the Triassic time
Before the ants evolved, rock weathering
Was temperature dependent, leaching lime.
Warm mud in post-apocalyptic waste
Bereft of vegetation, washed away.
And Gaia, both hungover and disgraced,
Left complex biomes for another day.
  She sobered up in five or six epochs
  But those hard times forever changed the rocks.

Geology 42 779

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