FOSSIL SONG: Reflections on Earth's Becoming

Sooner or later,
	the lush, living pastures of today, 
	that breathe bright green and gold,
	 crack and collapse beneath searing solar rays,
	til parched deserts spread across Earth's final days,
	as memories dissolve in the galactic cold.

Sooner or later,
	the ocean’s cradle where sea-creatures now roam
	will be gradually thrust up into mountains of stone;
	silvery fish will become pressed as hard fossils 
	of chalk and calcium in alpine cemeteries.

Soon enough,
	the contours by which recognize familiar forms,
	will warp and wander in future storms,
	as all well-known shores and skies shift
	as current prevailing norms drift.

Soon enough,
	the contours by which we know land forms,
	will blur through earthquakes and storms;
	no shore will keep its ancient stand,
	no sky retain its cerulean colors;
	time will shift all that once was known,
	claiming new patterns as its own.

Soon enough,
	some distant kin of you and me
	will tread above our shadowed trace,
	pausing to wonder who we were,
	and why we ceased to be.


   Tiny dust motes danced in the thin afternoon light slanting through a bookstore café's smudged
windows, as three friends reflected on the previous poem. The alcove felt cramped with the scent
of roasted coffee, aging books, the faint warmth of bodies too close together for too long.

   Yahui didn't wait long. She tapped her fingernails against the formica counter in a quick
gesture. "This poem is damn wimpy!" she said flatly. "It feels like surrender dressed up as
wisdom. Where’s the verve and zip? Where’s the vigor?"

   Carla gave a slow, affirmative nod, her chin resting on both hands as she stared blankly at her
friends. "Mmm," she said mutely, which wasn't quite agreement and wasn't quite not. Then, after
a beat: "I mean, yeah. Death is inevitable. That's obvious. But to ignore life entirely while
you're still in it? It feels like a tragic waste. It’s like closing a book halfway through and
calling it the whole story."

   Carlos remained silent briefly, his gaze shifting between Carla and Yahui. He straightened up
and then gestured toward the view outside. The late afternoon pulsed with life—people crossing
streets, trees flickering in the wind, sunlight dragging itself slowly across the hoods of
parked cars. Still looking out through the window, he said, "This is not about surrender. To me,
it's all about scale." He leaned forward slightly, his elbows on the table. "Not the scale of a
human life, or even a civilization scale. It's about larger planetary scale. The one we usually
flinch away from because it makes us feel small and most people don't like that."

   Yahui opened her mouth as Carlos kept going, but then refrained from speaking. "If you only look
at endings, sure—everything hollows out. But if you only look at beginnings, you're lying to
yourself about the cost. The poem's not choosing a side.  It's holding both at once. Death in
one hand." He raised his left hand, "and the absolute, stubborn, almost irrational insistence on
living in the other." He raised both hands, looking at Carla and Yahui briefly.

   Carla ventured, "Freud had a name for that," almost to herself. "Thanatos and Eros. The twin
drives. We carry them in our bones, and yet—" she smiled at her friends at the table—"we keep
ordering coffee and keep on arguing about poems."

   Yahui stared at Carlos for a moment, her fingernails hovering above the counter but no longer
tapping. Then she looked away, out the same window, her expression unreadable—not convinced,
perhaps, but quieter than before. The dust motes in the room kept dancing. No one spoke, though
the silence had subtly shifted.


=====================================================================================
from Desert Chants: Hearing the Voice of the Wilderness  
LONG SUMMARY: A reflective poem and dialogue exploring the tension between Earth's inevitable transformations 
	and the human struggle to balance awareness of mortality with the vitality of living.
SHORT SUMMARY: Some thoughts about continental drift and environmental change.
KEYWORDS:  plate tectonics, continental rifts, geological time scales, terran metamorphoses,
	impermanence, geological transformations, existential reflections, deep time, 
	philosophical dialogues, transience, cosmic time scales 

Author: T Newfields [Nitta Hirou / Huáng Yuèwǔ] (b. 1955 - ?)
Begun:  2000 in Taipei, Taiwan  ✶ Finished: 2026 in Shizuoka, Japan
Creative Commons License: Attribution. {{CC-BY-4.0}} Granted

Disclosure: This piece was partially generated using AI tools for styling and ideation; 
            human editing was then applied.
 
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TRANSLATIONS

ESPAÑOL   https://www.tnewfields.info/es/fosil.htm
NIHONGO   https://www.tnewfields.info/jp/kaseki.htm
ZHŌNGWÉN  https://www.tnewfields.info/zh/huashi.htm