Geology

From behind a stand of Utah yucca, jackrabbits

scattering at her feet like minnows

from a rock dropped in creek, enter

The Geologist. Jeans stained with every kind

of dirt the world provides, tousled sandstone

hair tied back, she scans the mountains

which bound this basin two hundred miles

to the west and reads them

like a gambler walking the shed-row

before placing his bets. The plates in this basin

move fast, she says, about an inch

per century. Where they meet head on

they rear up like horn-locked rams

and form ranges. But the summits erode

as fast as the planes buckle up, so these mountains

are always the same height but never

the same mountains. If we made a movie

where a million years elapsed

every second, that range would look like a fountain.

 

It's The Geologist's job to think like this.

In the trade they call it Deep Time: a place

where the eons pass like clocks tick.

The Geologist stands on Cape Cod facing east

and imagines herself aft

on the ship North America, full speed ahead,

the harbor of Europe growing hazy as she waves

from the railing. The Grand Canyon

is a crease in a hand, Vesuvius a nostril.

 

Tired, I put down my book, study

our bodies in lamplight. My pale feet

are awkward, scrawny. You're deep

under sleep, between your lips

an infinitesimal crevasse. We are less

than gasps, my sweet, crumbs in the pocket

of a flea. I kiss your eyelids. How tender they are,

thin as moth wings. All night the whole earth

heaves like an ocean beneath them.

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