CONTENTS: Cyclops balls / Nuptials / The spot / Fossil dentistry / Rippled / Wave power / Ancient rock art / If rocks had genes / Rebirth / Titanium branches / Racial harmony / Self comfort / Sort’a ’bout water / Abstract art / Living in the Splash Zone / Old boys / Moon rocks / Whirling dervish drillers / Do you speak Rock? / Cheese n chalk / All hail the Tea-stained veil / Fossil flipflops / Grindstone Piranhas / Dickbrain / The colour of invisible Oxygen / Graven cave chocolate / Celestial Universe / Petrified Leviathan
As in the tradition of ‘lick, sip, suck, savour,’ look at the photo/s, try to guess the poem’s topic, read the poem, reflect back on the image/s and the topic.
Cyclops balls
Who knew?
Cyclops played beach volleyball, at low tide
Discarded balls buried, over time petrified
Fracked by lightning bolts, gods preside
Fractured, forsaken, beach balls buried
Micro-crystalline silicates layered, unvaried
Erosion-exposed, agate-filled fractures, married
As polyhedron, stone volleyball defiance
Kick hard as you like, inertial alliance
More plausible origin? Over to science.
Nuptials
Two dinosaurs’ wedding day during their epoch
Dared to be different while tying the knot
Ice cream wedding cake’s striated swirly mix
Cut, not eaten, “Fuck the apocalypse!”
Chicxulub meteorite buried their life’s plan
Cake then fossilised, tilted as Nature can
Leaves us to wonder at life’s cruel fate
Who’da known, when they set the date?
But the cake knife’s whereabouts remains a mystery
Along with the Bride and Groom’s attire history…
The spot
There is in every mystery novel plot
A time, a place where X marks the spot
Where something happened, someone got shot
In anger, revenge, jealousy raging hot
But what happened here, time has forgot
A mystery to ponder, we’ll never know what…
Fossil dentistry
Folded towels and surgical gowns
Sterilised, clean to meet nervous frowns
Fresh new swabs stacked handy for use
Blood and rinse water’s surgical sluice
Dentist’s drill laying quietly in wait
The dreaded sound of imminent fate
Crumpled swabs methodically discarded
Blotted blood-stains duly disregarded
Dentist’s shoes and ridge-back remains
Scaley existence now rock-strata stains
Patient’s jaw with healthy molars
Fossilised like X-ray watercolours
Abscessed molar in extraction tray
Removal’s need shown by decay
Bloodied gums with roots post-removal
Pre-suture closure for patient approval
Then the Meteorite’s brutal intervention
Scales’ defiance define present attention.
Rippled
Forces unimaginable, origins of the Universe
Energy, matter, mystery, Big Bang’s blunt disperse
Colliding giant Black Holes, Supernovae impart
Gravitational ripples: unseen Kinetic art.
Wave power
Main waves’ might, go with the flow
Others reflective, contrarian paths go
Some constructive, add sand to beach
Or erode, take from barefoot’s reach
Some interactive, with complex refractions
Accordingly choose new intriguing directions…
Ancient rock art
No ground ochre, no human hand
Nor grass-stalk brush, chewed-end fanned
No firestick lit, nor mouth-sprayed stencil
Nor spraycan, crayon, feltpen, pencil
But rock strata buried, subsoil deep
Crack-delivered, groundwater’s seep
Depositing minerals as far as would creep
Nature’s enigmatic rock art, ours to keep.
If rocks had genes
If Rocks had genes, would they change their game as played?
Some made from sediment, layers of every shade
Some are birthed from Magma, mineral crystals neat
Others metamorphosed, after re-melts heat.
Rocks would be like lollies, ribbons of every colour
Faces shaped and shiny, others plain and duller
And some with luck, would stand out like a beacon
Colours matched, striped and swirled, no faults with which to weaken.
Those with genes for Chemistry, minerals with high value
“I’m worth mining, crushed and smelted!” surely they would tell you
And so they would, as they should, each find a common use
Doorstop, gem or building stone, their power to seduce.
Rebirth
River-washed sands, watery seafloor graveyard mourn
Thick layers, percolating, cementing minerals, sandstone born
Tectonic uplift, cracked into blocks, warp and wefts
Water-borne, ferrous minerals, seep in, fill clefts
Tectonic uplift, raised seafloor now dry land
Wind, water, salt sculpts softer sandstone bland
Wafered razors, stand proud with suave style
Blue sky above, toothless, approving smile.
Titanium branches
The Cretaceous Era, a warmer clime
New species flourished, evolution’s prime
Flowering plants, insects pollinating
Early Mammals doing their furred thing
The evolutionary tree’s bold new branches
Chance mutations sow multiple tranches
Then the meteorite, Chicxulub Crater
Extinctions, most species: see ya later
Above and below the K-Pg Boundary
Stark comparison, dead life-forms’ foundry
Only seen now as fossils unearthed
Same as life’s tree, rough seas birthed.
Racial harmony
All too well we know, the vagaries of skin colour
Smugness, hurt, UV protection, but racisms ugly collar
But what about the Algal zone, seaweed’s segregation?
Colour-coded seaside suburbs, cause for consternation?
First there is the green zone, Chlorophyll doing the job
Absorbing blue and red light, leaves green reflected snob
Then next in deeper water, now less light to share
More pigment is required, brown Xanthophylls the snare
Then deeper past the brown zone, light is now more scarce
Rhodopsin red’s the answer, red algae show their wares
With secretive separate sex lives, no inter-racial marriage!
Gametes grown and subtly thrown, into their saline carriage
These shoreline seabed seaweeds, succumb to stormy seas
Crashing waves and surging wash, pluck them off with ease
Smashed from their security, strewn upon the shore
Snuggled up in racial harmony, for their final snore…
Self comfort
Ephemeral footprint, somebody’s toes
Who or why, nobody knows
Curled up comfort, flood tide’s fate
Discarded leaf’s lonely wait…
Sort’a ’bout water
Peaceful, serene, random order
Even old shells, a restful boarder
But Nature’s message, there to read
Peril to ignore, with human greed.
Challenging times, stormy weather
One good omen: a lone black feather
Spiritual sign of faith and trust
Hope, solutions, not forlorn dust.
The entry points, Nature’s plughole
Provident rains, gravity’s goal
Seeping down through porous rock
To fill Artesian’s timeless sock.
Trees: rainmakers, deep roots suck
Groundwater, minerals, make yer own luck
Evapotranspiration, Nature’s rain solution
And Boabs, Bottle trees, storage execution.
And timeless geology, weathered morphology
Allowing soakage for flood-rain meteorology
Channel Country seeping towards Lake Eyre
Refilling the basin, the Artesian to share.
Each bore uncapped, waste water lost
A dam, climate change, replenishment cost
Fracking, gas production, pollution with no care
Destroy at your peril, greedy humans beware…
Abstract art
A blank stone canvas, plain, boring, bland
Single-celled Cyanophytes’ opportune stand
Enticed by moisture, light, and mineral ions
Pigments, species unique, subtley etched by scions.
Living in the Splash Zone
In the dress-circle zone, above inter-tidal reach
Spring high-tide rough seas’ spray will breech
The dry rock surfaces’ indents to fill
Saltwater mini-pools, sun’s heat will distil
Water from salt, in gapped mineral grains
Salt crystals chisel, rock crumbs from plains
Salt-wedged pudlets pockmarked throughout
Deeper and deeper, with each new drought.
Old boys
“I say old boy, where’d you get that silly accent?”
“From Eton old sausage, it’s where I went.”
“Well old chap, stop eating old sausage!”
Knees bent, feet wet, poolside hostage
Thin, fat, tall, short, eyes shut or winking
Old brows brandied, loud or thinking
Furtive, slit or gape-mouthed in a row
Silly, stone sausages spruik what they know.
Moon rocks
Paired boxy buttocks, pressed ham, cheek to cheek
Bared boulder buns, attention sure to seek
Bum cracks, bullocks, white botrot’s coin-slot trawl
Mooning at the moon, cos rocks can’t howl, at all.
Whirling dervish drillers
On Mohs Scale of Hardness, Diamond is king
But igneous Basalt’s a pretty good thing
With water flow’s energy, spinning them round
And low tide resting, post-drilling soft ground
Shift-working drillers, first make a bowl
Countless tides later, a cylindrical Namma hole.
Do you speak Rock?
(Silent secret sentinels, or severe salt wedgie?)
Hieroglyphics, discovered in tombs, unlock age-old secrets
Of lost civilizations, images now digitized, binary, stored octuplets
Language, pronouncements, wisdom, laws, all coded as scripts
Stone tablet, leather, parchment, discs, history’s treasured crypts
Does nature have similar, obvious, secret proclivity
For code on rocks, warning, of its own vulnerability?
Cheese n chalk
Propionibacteria belch, hard Swiss cheese CO2 Bubbles
Penicillium mould, grows blue veins, whose chemistry then snuggles
With putrid foot odour’s Brevibacterium olfactory baulk
Difference in these rock cheeses, just like, well, cheese n chalk.
All hail, the Tea-stained veil
Lace-thin, and delicate, cave ceiling shawl
Carbonate crystals, perfect, no missing spall
Wet seasons brown, drought years white
Groundwater tannins, past climate in sight.
Fossil flipflops
Ever wandered a windswept beach
Only left-foot thongs litter, why’s? beseech
Wonder no more at this eerie thing
The answer: blue bottles with their fearsome sting.
Blue bottles, Physalia, have a float-come-sail
Asymmetrical, from which tentacles trail
Two varieties, left-handed and right
Determines their survival, or thong-like plight.
Lefties may sail, forty degrees, left of the breeze
The other half do opposite with right-handed ease
So half might perish, washed ashore, dead
The other half survive, reproduce instead.
Rubber thongs, flipflops, share same asymmetry
Thus sail the same, beached tideline visibility
To make us wonder, the missing one’s destination
Does the wind whisper, its secret location?
Grindstone Piranhas
Seemingly solid, intertidal sentinels
Dissipating sea forces, nature’s cartels
But high tide invasion
Wave surge liaison
With energised round rubbing
Piranhas, rolling, to and fro scrubbing
Relentlessly rasping, rubbley faciles
Bouldery hide of defenceless sessiles
Worn-weary legs the price to pay
For shiny smooth skin’s attractive display
With low tide’s brief, but peaceful reprieve
A restful scene, with which to deceive.
Dickbrain
“Hey everyone, look what I done!”
Half an hour spent in the burning Sun
Graffiti-gouged image of his knob-like brain
Bogan-grinned loser initials his name.
The colour of invisible oxygen
Earth’s early atmosphere had no Oxygen
But abundant Methane, CO2, Ammonia, Nitrogen
Then evolved unicellular, chlorophylled, photosynthesis
And primitive Acrogens, to emit O2’s stimulus
To change Earth’s inorganic mineral crust
By reacting with Iron to form red rust
Which infiltrated every rock crevice, cavity, cracks
And Iron-fixing bacteria’s iron-ore stacks
With all the Iron oxidised, now atmosphere to fill
Allowed aerobes and animals, to evolve at nature’s will
But left our rocks’ legacy, our eyes’ joy to tread
Rock pastels splashed aplenty, burnt orange and rich red.
Graven cave chocolate
Patient rocks eroded, floods recurrent
Transported, suspended sediment
Colloidal humus added
Cavern deposited
Dry times, dehydrated
Cleaved grids of chocolate
Slick, silent, enticing, defiant
Awaiting burial, concretion, ossification
Sensual, glistening, unlikely, eternal potential.
Celestial universe
Elliptical, concentric, gravity-bound atomic omelette
Masses: solar, planetary, lunar, asteroid, comet
Countless, clustered, spatial, seemingly scattered
In innumerable galaxies invariably sparsely mattered
Blackholes lurking, event horizon smirking
Ultimate, universal autocrats working
To bend laws of Physics beyond our know
As stars, galaxies, consumed as they grow
Multi, merging, fractured universes, ponder with awe
Explanatory patterns, do these rocks draw?
Petrified Leviathan
Slow plodding, ponderous, ground-shaking giant
Faltering last steps, after death, fossilized, unpliant
Furrowed brow, jumbled teeth, cheekbone, sunken nose
Where remnant eyes stare, nobody knows.