The history of a planet in sixteen lines
by Greg McClelland
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| Source: Mail Online |
It all began when a molten mass,
boiling within,
battered from without,
barreled through a gaping void.
Peaks of solidity surfaced;
tectonic hands and burning digits
designed antediluvian bone:
basalt, sandstone, granite, schist.
Through five hundred million years,
from Ordovician to Cretaceous,
our mother birthed and killed five litters
of living tissue.
Then she birthed a sixth,
which brewed its own poisons—
digital, solid, nuclear, microscopic—
leading to the first synthetic holocaust.
Greg McClelland is a retired government ethics attorney. He has published poetry in Ancient Paths, The Road Not Taken, All Around the Mulberry Bush, and his college alma mater newsletter. Besides writing poetry, he spends his retirement working in political activism, helping to ensure that Trump will never see the inside of the White House again.