What I Learned in My Geology 107 Class in the Year 2002

   I say I like the sun but my dark nature hangs over me like a mudstone lip

awaiting the rains,

knowing that stone morphs into viscous mud,

dirt awash in ground water refused by the earth’s top layer.

I say I crave the winter solstice to hurry and arrive

with its gift of elongated light filled moments

and yet upon its arrival

I mark no celebration.

I honk no horns, I burn no sage.

I merely nod my head up and down once or twice

at the most.   

    

I feel the celestial gods shaking their heads from side-to-side,

complaints sliding from their mouths,

something about unconscious-she-mortals.  A sorry sight,

gods demanding gratitude. 

    

Were the truth be known

there are those mornings when the sky awakens

earlier than has been its habit    when I groan

inwardly and say

Oh No

a new day is already here.   Making its demands on me,

a mere mortal.

I squeeze my eyelids harder against my eyeballs,

against these morning’s expectations.

I crave the anonymity of darkness.  I want to hold onto the dumbing

down of my life’s expectations.

Too late

for hind sighted wishes

the gods have turned deaf ears to me.

The goddesses join their cohorts, loudly chortling.

I get out

of bed   shedding the warmth of the down,

forced to face my image in the cold

reflecting mirror glass.   

    

The sky brightens,

playing second fiddle to its flashy flaring buddy,

Mister Sun,

while we earth dwellers bask in his offerings.

Or so goes the myth we tell our children to make girls go shirtless before they

must cover themselves, forever, staving off violations.

Yes, we tell them, go soak up the rays.

Go flock about in fields testing those gamma rays and run

rampant

courting future cells of melanoma,

Oh Ye children of gods and goddesses. 

   

As for me, I sink into the mudflow

seeking the dark days before winter solstice.  Digging deep past the summer with

muck covered eyes, sightless.

On knees, worn rough from plageoclastic unsorted debris

pushed along hard

ahead of the glacial

ice.

I make like a geode, hollow and gleaming with crystals

grown in places where no one ever

thunk

anything could grow.  

   

@junemoon  2002