Primal amalgam of cosmic dust,

liquified star-stuff, its molten gold

rouling in the planetary cores

alchemical cooking pot.

Struck by Thor’s mighty hammer

and the cold fires

of meteoritic re-creation

the rocks melt to flowing ores

and  weather to finest sand and silt.

Cyclic epochs of wind, wave and sun

abett grinding glaciers,

with fire, quake and flood

to smooth, churn and carve

oceanic trenches, mountain ranges, 

it’s waterways and land-masses,

Its surfaces and soils

mulched to richest humus, fecund loams

 by decomposition of bones, bodies

called Earth.

 

A tiny pebble, whizzing through

 the enormity of space;

veiled in a blueish gauze of skyey seas:

slung on its gravity-core of roaring flame

and weighted, like a telluric catapult

with ballasting stone -

birthing  momentum, magnetism

and spin.

 

Without - prior to - the other elements,

the potential for breath and bio-life

remained unborn, vacuum-packed.

A petrified blob of nuclear fission

grown perma-cold.

Yet, once reactions catalysed

- in immaculate conception!

the beginnings of microbial life emerged

with diversity, ingenuity, rare mutation

- and evolving sustainability:

Mother Earth, our wherewithal.

 

..

 

What would it take for a sterile rock

to