The Earth
Our globe has more than mere water and land.
It has more than caps and boots of white snow,
more than a snaking navy cloak of sea,
more than a tawny belt of desert sand,
more than just gusts that the hidden wind blows,
and more than all the grass in a prairie.
For even when fire strips grass from prairie—
blackening the miles of once-golden land,
with ash swept as far as the hot wind blows—
even when spring’s buds are coated in snow,
and even when rich valleys turn to sand,
there is more potential in soil and sea.
There is regeneration. Sky to sea,
grass to ash, bones to dust: the wild prairie,
the austere mountains, and the humble sands
all change and renew as biomes of land.
The process is cold, delicate as snow,
and whirls through seasons just as the wind blows.
What will be from what has come. The old blows
of time, and the future we cannot see
together form renewal: a clean snow
that covers death in the wood and prairie,
leaves reviving water in thirsty land,
and brings tendrils from an infertile sand.
So even from unfruitful waste—the sand—
from pole to pole, so far as the wind blows,
each season breathes new life into the land.
Reefs made of dead oysters grow undersea,
while, on shore, fire revives the prairie,
and tundra is insulated by snow.
Ice ages come and cover Earth in snow.
Then time passes. Frost melts. Lakes become sand.
New species inhabit epic prairies.
And still, time passes. Winnowing winds blow.
Shorelines change, and bays are lost to the sea.
The treeless field becomes a wooded land.
So. Ephemeral are prairie and snow,
like shadows from land, like moisture from sand,
like a wind that blows the spray from the sea.
David Murphy 