Bay of Islands
Not a catastrophe, this,
since no-one, as it was happening,
was then available, sedentary, local –
rocks scattered, cataclysmically,
as here only forces of wind
and water can shift;
or else some guy does, a re-assembler,
with a mind to take an excursion
back through geologic time, stop
in the cold late Pleistocene
where the coastline now
is not. Locked once into rock,
the photographed arch that abuts
the sunny cliff – those
who pass under it relying
on the firm fact that today
its inherent collapse
remains held in play. Everything
recommends implied
signs for work-in-progress
or in-regress – flexibility
any way. So, a fine location
for bipeds to clamber about
lightly, as it is for a flock
of pied cormorants, atop
a remainder, sentinel rock,
to digest their catch. Flexibility
also of tilted and uplifted strata
in the stacked sequence
of epochal seasons worth
considering slowly so to wonder,
in effect – at a flexible stretch –
what a needle sampling
the geologic record here might
make of this impressive,
windswept collection.
As if for the paleontologist
who to me confessed
he was deeply into prized fossil
pollen, its music, trapped in layers
beneath Lake Tanganyika; made refined
assertions about proto-bees,
surely those making that low note
a bow might extract from a cello.
Though what aeolian sediments here
might express I’m only equipped
to know hearing closely,
via a flexibly cocked ear, the sea clash
with rock in this irresistible epoch.