Illustrious queen, set me free
from the chains of my desire

Though mere form, an eternal dream
relieved by bursts of white fire

A primordial odyssey
from ocean's novel progeny

Crawled out of Cambrian waters,
fish who yielded the first daughters

Dear Readers, President Theodore Roosevelt wanted
to save this marvelous Natural Wonder for posterity! So
the Grand Canyon National Park was set up in 1919. In
1979 it was declared as World Heritage Site! With the
portion “Sun rises and sets over the Grand Canyon”, -
I have concluded this poem. Kindly take your time to read,
no need to comment in a hurry please ! Thanks, -Raj

CONCLUDING THE GRAND CANYON
STORY IN VERSE – RAJ NANDY

INTRODUCTION
Literature about great natural features include
two personal types of writing;
Description of things observed, and impressions
of what is known and seen!
The story of the Grand Canyon takes us back
to the Pre-Cambrian Age,
When violent forces were unleashed from within
the Earth, during its formative stage;
When mighty forces of erosion began to sculpture
her undulating landscapes!
Therefore, I begin with a quote about Erosion,
From the great poet Alfred Lord Tennyson; -
“The hills are shadows and they flow,
From form to form, and nothing stands.
They pass like clouds, the solid lands.
Like clouds they shape themselves and go!”

TO RECAPITULATE PART ONE:
In Part One we have seen, how movement of
earth’s tectonic plates unleashed violent forces
from within!
It formed mountains and lakes, shaping our
landscapes, which now appear so peaceful,
grand, and serene!
Over millions of years the forces of erosion in
the form of wind, rain, sun and snow,
Sculptured earth’s evolving features creating
majestic, panoramic vistas as we know!
Geologists now opine, that the Grand Canyon
was carved out by the Colorado River, -
cutting through ‘layers of Geological time’!

THE COLORADO RIVER CARVED THE CANYON:
In the state of Colorado, from the high country,
Where snow and ice lasts well beyond the dawning
days of Spring;
There the majestic peaks of the Rockies form the
perennial fountain head from which springs, -
One of the great rivers of the world the Colorado;
Which travels 1400 miles through seven States
reaching the Californian Gulf west of Mexico!
Now during prehistoric days, the pristine Colorado
had flowed almost along the same path as today!
But after the magical rise of the Colorado Plateau
some five million years ago, (Refer Part One)
It had blocked the river’s path making it flow
south-east into the Gulf of Mexico!
Few Geologists now opine, that this diverted river
had formed the pre-historic Lake Bidahochi,
Which later drained out to form the Little Colorado
River, which today we get see!
But the cut-off western portion of the river (named
Hualapai Drainage) continued to eat away through
the Plateau’s southern portion,
Through a gradual process known as ’Headwater
Erosion’!
For the river flowing at a steeper gradient along
the ‘Grand Staircase’ of the Plateau, carried
stones, rocks and debris,
Which formed the cutting tools, deepening the
Canyon over countless centuries!
When the softer sedimentary layers of the Plateau
below the top rocky layers gave away, - it resulted
in several rock falls!
While flash floods and erosion continued to breach
the sides of the canyon walls!
Thus over millions of years the width of the Canyon
gradually increased;
While the gushing and untamed Colorado River
chiseled through the depths of those Cyclopean walls, -
running deep!
Now the ancient Lake Bidahochi which had breached its
banks, had captured our pristine Colorado;
And their combined power increased the volume of
water and river’s chiseling power, with its rapid flow!

ENDANGERED COLORADO RIVER :
It is unfortunate that today, the Colorado no longer
reach the mighty Pacific as in the olden days!
With the progress of civilization and the spawning
of big cities,
Like Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles;
And to cater for the agricultural farmlands and the
Industries,
Many dams got built to divert its water and to
generate electricity!
Thus over a century of overuse and abuse of this
precious natural resource,
Gradually choked up the great Colorado, as it
became a mere trickle at the end of its course!
Ecologists now debate, while USA has launched
‘Save the Colorado River Project’!
Let us now cheer up by getting back to our
Grand Canyon’s scenic beauty,
Before concluding this wondrous Canyon Story!

SUN RISES AND SETS OVER GRAND CANYON!
To see the sunrise from Mather, Yaki, or the
Hopi Point, - located on the Southern Rim,
Becomes a life time experience, better than any
surreal dream!
First a glimmer then a glow, when a faint blue-white
sheen begins to show!
As the sun gradually sprinkles its light, streaks of
crimson red spreads across the eastern sky!
Soon orange and yellow shafts of light, light up the
Canyon walls up high!
Squirrels scurry out of sight, and birds twitter in
the sky!
The Hummingbird hovers like a helicopter, and
Big Horn sheep are also seen;
The Hummingbird which can even fly backwards,
enlivens this early morning scene!
The sun now rising in its resplendent glory,
showers the canyon with its kaleidoscopic beams;
With streaks of yellow, gold and red, it chases out
lurking shadows from within!
Like a curtain lifting before their eyes, the tourists
view this panoramic sight!
As the Grand Canyon awakens to greet the day,
With cameras madly clicking away!
The great ancestors of the Hopi tribe, Hopi
meaning both peaceful and wise;
Had inhabited these areas some eight thousand
years hence!
Their scooped out granaries and tools found inside
Canyon walls, - have an ancient story to tell !
The Spaniards were the first Europeans to reach,
in search for gold which they never found!
But for the Hopis the Canyon remains, as their
sacred Holy ground!
When those Spaniards saw the Colorado way
down below, from the Canyon’s upper rim’s side;
They said that this thin blue streaked River, was
barely five feet wide! (In mid-16th century)
The average width of the Canyon is around 10 miles;
While the River at its narrowest point is 600 yards
wide!
The Condor the largest American bird, catching an
upward draft circles up high;
Like an uncrowned monarch he surveys his kingdom
below, nothing escapes his watchful eyes!
Temperature at the Canyon’s floor is 20 degrees
higher, when compared to its outer rim;
Supports an ecosystem of plants and animals,
With the river as chief nourisher of all things!
Evergreen pines and furs grow along the cooler
areas of the Canyon’s outer rim;
While cactus species are found on its arid floor,
Their exotic flowers bloom during Summer and Spring!
The Northern Rim a thousand feet higher, offers many
spectacular sites!
But the Southern Rim remains open throughout the
year, while the Northern closes during Winter time.
From the Hopi Point west of the Canyon, the visitors
enjoy the beauty of the silent, sinking sun;
When the sky gets diffused with vermillion red, as
darkening shadows engulf those Canyon walls!
The mighty Canyon with its Cyclopean walls,
perhaps the playground of the Titans from eons past;
Shaped by some mythical Vulcan, shall remain till
this World continues to last!

CONCLUDING THE GRAND CANYON STORY:
I conclude my Grand Canyon Story by quoting a
poem I had once read;
Written by an Anonymous author, whose name
I had failed to get!
“BUILT WITH PATIENCE OF ENDLESS TIME,
YEARS ERODE AND SHAPES DEFINE.
LAYERS YIELD THEIR COUNTLESS AGE,
EYES CAN SEE BUT CANNOT GAUGE!
STAND AGAPE WITH AWE INSPIRED,
IMAGE READS OF LIFE TRANSPIRED.
CLIFFS REACH OUT TO TOUCH THE SKY,
PATHS LEAD DOWN WHERE RIVER LYE.
COLORS, SHAPES AND SHADOWS MELD,
HERE, A PLACE FOREVER HELD.
WALK AWAY YET NEVER PART,
BODY LEAVES BUT NOT THE HEART!”
- Anonymous
……………………………………………………………
ALL COPYRIGHTS WITH THE AUTHOR RAJ NANDY
OF NEW DELHI, E-MAIL: rajnandy21@yahoo.in

A cloudless night like this
Can set the spirit soaring:
After a tiring day
The clockwork spectacle is
Impressive in a slightly boring
Eighteenth-century way.

It soothed adolescence a lot
To meet so shameless a stare;
The things I did could not
Be so shocking as they said
If that would still be there
After the shocked were dead

Now, unready to die
Bur already at the stage
When one starts to resent the young,
I am glad those points in the sky
May also be counted among
The creatures of middle-age.

It's cosier thinking of night
As more an Old People's Home
Than a shed for a faultless machine,
That the red pre-Cambrian light
Is gone like Imperial Rome
Or myself at seventeen.

Yet however much we may like
The stoic manner in which
The classical authors wrote,
Only the young and rich
Have the nerve or the figure to strike
The lacrimae rerum note.

For the present stalks abroad
Like the past and its wronged again
Whimper and are ignored,
And the truth cannot be hid;
Somebody chose their pain,
What needn't have happened did.

Occurring this very night
By no established rule,
Some event may already have hurled
Its first little No at the right
Of the laws we accept to school
Our post-diluvian world:

But the stars burn on overhead,
Unconscious of final ends,
As I walk home to bed,
Asking what judgment waits
My person, all my friends,
And these United States.

Molecules of two elements, nitrogen and oxygen, comprise about 99 percent of the air. The remaining hoity toity 1% includes small amounts celestial seasoning luxurious riches as argon and carbon dioxide. (Other gases such as neon, helium, and methane are present in trace amounts.) Oxygen is the life-giving element in the air.

Earth's atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon, and 0.03% carbon dioxide with very small percentages of other elements. Our atmosphere also contains water vapor. In addition, Earth's atmosphere contains traces of dust particles, pollen, plant grains and other solid particles.

Even when the air seems to be completely clear, it is full of atmospheric particles - invisible solid and semisolid bits of matter, including dust, smoke, pollen, spores, bacteria and viruses. Some atmospheric particles are so large that you will feel them if they strike you. However, particles this large rarely travel far before they fall to the ground. Finer particles may be carried many miles before settling during a lull in the wind, while still tinier specks may remain suspended in the air indefinitely. The finest particles are jostled this way and that by moving air molecules and drift with the slightest currents. Only rain and snow can wash them out of the atmosphere. These tiny particles are so small that scientists measure their dimensions in microns - a micron is about one 25-thousandth of an inch. They include pollen grains, whose diameters are sometimes less than 25 microns; bacteria, which range from about 2 to 30 microns across; individual virus particles, measuring a very small fraction of a micron; and carbon smoke particles, which may be as tiny as two hundredths of a micron.

Particles are frequently found in concentrations of more than a million per cubic inch of air. A human being's daily intake of air is about 450,000 cubic inches. This means that we inhale an astronomical numbers of foreign bodies. Particles larger than about 5 microns are generally filtered from the air in the nasal passages. Other large particles are caught by hairlike protuberances in the air passages leading to the lungs and are swept back toward the mouth. Most of the extremely fine particles that do reach the lungs are exhaled again - although some of this matter is deposited in the minute air sacs within the lungs. From these air sacs, particles may go into solution and pass through the lung walls into the bloodstream. If the material is toxic, harmful reactions may occur when it enters the blood. Fine particles retained in the lungs can cause permanent tissue damage, as with Coal workers' pneumoconiosis (black lung disease), caused by buildup of coal dust in the lungs, and with silicosis, which is caused by the buildup of silicon dust.

If the air is still, given sufficient time, all but the smallest airborne particles will settle to the ground under their own weight. Their rate of fall is closely proportional to particle size and density.
For example, vast amounts of fine volcanic ash were thrown into the air by the eruption of the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa, in 1883, and again by the Alaskan volcano Katmai, in 1912. In both instances, the finer dust reached the stratosphere and spread around the world high above the rains and storms that tend to cleanse the lower atmosphere. In fact, many years elapsed before these volcanic dusts entirely disappeared from the atmosphere. Since a two-micron dust particle may require about four years to fall 17 miles in the atmosphere, the lingering effect is not in the least surprising.
Dust storms are also prolific producers of airborne debris. Europe is sometimes showered with dust originating in the Sahara. In March 1901, for instance, an estimated total of two million tons of Sahara dust fell on North Africa and the Europe. Two years later, in February 1903, Britain received a deposit estimated at ten million tons. On many occasions, Sahara dust has fallen in muddy rain and reddish snow over much of southwestern Europe. During North America's droughts of the 1930s, dust storms blew ten million tons of dust at a time aloft in the heart of the continent. Occasionally, high winds swept the dust eastward 1800 miles to darken skies along the continent's Atlantic coast.

When the wind strikes the crest of an ocean wave, or a calm sea is agitated by rain or by air bubbles bursting at the surface, the finer droplets that enter the air quickly evaporate, leaving tiny salt crystals suspended in the air. Winds carry these salt crystals over all the Earth. Normally, airborne salt particles from the sea are less than a micron in diameter. It would take a million of them to weigh a pound.
Salt particles play an important part in weather processes because they are hygroscopic - they absorb water. Raindrops usually form around tiny particles that act as nuclei for condensation. Generally, each fog and cloud droplet also collects around a particle of some type at its center. Tiny crystals of sea salt make better condensation nuclei than other natural particles found in the air. Thus, salt particles in the air help make rain.

Dust from meteor showers may occasionally affect world rainfall. When the Earth encounters a swarm of meteors, those meteors that get to the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere are vaporized by heat from friction. The resulting debris is a fine smoke or powder. This fine dust then floats down into the cloud system of the lower atmosphere, where it can readily serve as nuclei around which ice crystals or raindrops can form. Increases in world rainfall come about a month after the Earth encounters meteor systems in space. The delay of a month allows sufficient time for the meteoric dust to fall through the upper atmosphere. Occasionally, large meteors leave visible trains of dust. Most often their trails disappear rapidly, but in a few witnessed cases a wake of dust has remained visible for an hour or so.
In one extreme instance-a great meteor that broke up in the sky over Siberia in 1908-the dust cloud traveled all the way around the world before it dissipated.

Large forest fires are among the more spectacular producers of foreign particles in the atmosphere.
Because these fires create violent updrafts, smoke particles are carried to great heights, and, being small, are spread over vast distances by high altitude winds. In the autumn of 1950, forest fires in Alberta, Canada produced smoke that drifted east over North America on the prevailing wind and crossed the North Atlantic, reaching Britain and continental Europe. The light-scattering properties of this dense smoke made the Sun look indigo and the Moon blue to observers in Scotland and other northern lands.

Wind-pollinated plants are the most prolific sources of foreign particles in the air. This is a problem for people with allergies.

Spores are closely related to pollens. Spores are the reproductive bodies of fungi, which include molds, yeasts, rusts, mildews, puffballs and mushrooms. Tiny spores are adrift everywhere in the air, even over the oceans. Although they resemble pollens in general appearance, spores are not fertilizing agents. Instead, they are like seeds, and give rise to new organisms wherever they take hold. Spores have been found as high as 14 miles in the air over the entire globe. Most fungi depend on the wind for spore dissemination. Once airborne, spores are carried easily by the slightest air currents.

Once, physicians were taught that infectious microorganisms quickly settle out of the air and die. Today, the droplets ejected, say, by a sneeze, are known to evaporate almost immediately, leaving whatever microorganisms they contain to drift through the air. Only a relatively small fraction of microorganism’s human beings breathe cause disease. In fact, most bacteria are actually helpful. Some, for example, convert atmospheric nitrogen into usable plant food. Pathogenic, or disease-producing, microorganisms, however, can be very dangerous. Most propagate by subdivision-each living cell splits into two cells. Each of the new cells then grows and divides again into two more cells. Provided with ideal conditions, populations multiply quickly. Fortunately microorganisms do not thrive very well in the air. Unless there is enough humidity in the air, many desiccate and die. Short exposure to the ultraviolet radiation of the Sun also kills most microorganisms. Low temperatures greatly decrease their activity, and elevated temperatures destroy them rapidly. Still, many microorganisms survive in the air, despite these hazards. Among the tiniest of airborne particles are viruses, which are on the borderline between living matter and lifeless chemical substances.

Earth is the only planet we know of that can support life. This is an amazing fact, considering that it is made out of the same matter as other planets in our solar system, was formed at the same time and through the same processes as every other planet, and gets its energy from the sun. To a universal traveler, Earth may seem to be a harmless little planet in the far reaches of one of billions of spiral galaxies in the universe. It has an average size star of average brightness and is joined by seven other planets — which support no known life forms — in its solar system. While this may be fitting for a passage from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, in the grand scheme of the universe, it would be a fairly accurate description. However, Earth is a planet teeming with vitality and is home to billions of plants and animals that share a common evolutionary track. How and why did we get here? What processes had to take place for this to happen? And where do we go from here? The fact is, no one has been able to come close to knowing exactly what led to the origins of life, and we may never know. After 5 billion years of Earth’s formation and evolution, the evidence may have been lost. But scientists have made significant progress in understanding what chemical processes that may have led to the origins of life. There are many theories, but most have the same general perspective of how things came to be the way they are. Following is an account of life’s beginnings based on some of the leading research and theories related to the subject, and of course, fossil records dating back as far as 3.5 billion years ago.

The solar system was created from gas clouds and dust that remained from the Sun's formation some 6-7 billion years ago. This material contained only about .2% of the solar system's mass with the Sun holding the rest. Earth began to form over 4.6 billion years ago from the same cloud of gas (mostly hydrogen and helium) and interstellar dust that formed our sun, the rest of the solar system and even our galaxy. In fact, Earth is still forming and cooling from the galactic implosion that created the other stars and planetary systems in our galaxy. This process began about 13.6 billion years ago when the Milky Way Galaxy began to form. As our solar system began to come together, the sun formed within a cloud of dust and gas that continued to shrink in upon itself by its own gravitational forces. This caused it to undergo the fusion process and give off light, heat and other radiation. During this process, the remaining clouds of gas and dust that surrounded the sun began to form into smaller lumps called planetesimals, which eventually formed into the planets we know today.

A large number of small objects, called planetesimals, began to form around the Sun early in the formation of the solar system. These objects were the building blocks for the planets that exist today. The Earth went through a period of catastrophic and intense formation during its earliest beginnings 4.6-4.4 billion years ago. By 3.8 to 4.1 billion years ago, Earth had become a planet with an atmosphere (not like our atmosphere today) and an ocean. This period of Earth’s formation is referred to as the Precambrian Period. The Precambrian is divided into three parts: the Hadean, Archean and Proterozoic Periods.

The Earth formed under so much heat and pressure that it formed as a molten planet. For nearly the first billion years of formation (4.5 to 3.8 billion years ago) — called the Hadean Period (or hellish period) — Earth was bombarded continuously by the remnants of the dust and debris — like asteroids, meteors and comets — until it formed into a solid sphere, pulled into orbit around the sun and began to cool down. Earth's early atmosphere most likely resembled that of Jupiter's atmosphere, which contains hydrogen, helium, methane and ammonia, and is poisonous to humans. (Photo: NASA, from Voyager 1). As Earth began to take solid form, it had no free oxygen in its atmosphere. It was so hot that the water droplets in its atmosphere could not settle to form surface water or ice. Its first atmosphere was also so poisonous, comprised of helium and hydrogen, that nothing would have been able to survive.
Earth’s second atmosphere was formed mostly from the outgassing of such volatile compounds as water vapor, carbon monoxide, methane, ammonia, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrochloric acid and sulfur produced by the constant volcanic eruptions that besieged the Earth. It had no free oxygen. About 4.1 billion years ago, the Earth’s surface — or crust — began to cool and stabilize, creating the solid surface with its rocky terrain. Clouds formed as the Earth began to cool, producing enormous volumes of rainwater that formed the oceans. For the next 1.3 billion years (3.8 to 2.5 billion years ago), the Archean Period, first life began to appear and the world’s land masses began to form. Earth’s initial life forms were bacteria, which could survive in the highly toxic atmosphere that existed during this time. Toward the end of the Archean Period and at the beginning of the Proterozoic Period, about 2.5 billion years ago, oxygen-forming photosynthesis began to occur. The first fossils were a type of blue-green algae that could photosynthesize.

Earth's atmosphere was first supplied by the gasses expelled from the massive volcanic eruptions of the Hadean Era. These gases were so poisonous, and the world was so hot, that nothing could survive. As the planet began to cool, its surface solidified as a rocky terrain, much like Mars' surface (center photo) and the oceans began to form as the water vapor condensed into rain. First life came from the oceans. Some of the most exciting events in Earth’s history and life occurred during this time, which spanned about two billion years until about 550 million years ago. The continents began to form and stabilize, creating the supercontinent Rodinia about 1.2 billion years ago. Although Rodinia is composed of some of the same land fragments as the more popular supercontinent, Pangea, they are two different supercontinents. Pangea formed some 225 million years ago and would evolve into the seven continents we know today. Free oxygen began to build up around the middle of the Proterozoic Period — around 1.8 billion years ago — and made way for the emergence of life as we know it today. This increased oxygen created conditions that would not allow most of the existing life to survive and thus made way for the more oxygen-dependent life forms. By the end of the Proterozoic Period, Earth was well along in its evolutionary processes leading to our current period, the Holocene Period,  or Anthropocene Period, also known as the Age of Man. Thus, about 525 million years ago, the Cambrian Period began. During this period, life “exploded,” developing almost all of the major groups of plants and animals in a relatively short time. It ended with the massive extinction of most of the existing species about 500 million years ago, making room for the future appearance and evolution of new plant and animal species. About 498 million years later — 2.2 million years ago — the first modern human species emerged.

Did You Know? The first modern human being was called **** habilis, the first of the **** genus. This species developed stone tools for use in daily life. **** habilis means “Handy Man.” He existed from about 2.2 to 1.5 million years ago. There are earlier species related to modern man, called hominids. The images show the skull shape and probable appearance of **** habilis.

The PreCambrian Period — accounts for about 90 percent of Earth’s history. It lasted for about four billion years until about 550 million years ago. About 70 percent of the world’s land masses were created in the Archean Era, between 3.8 and 2.5 million years ago. Rodinia, widely recognized as the first supercontinent, formed during the Proterozoic Era, about 2.5 billion years ago. It is believed that the oldest human family member was discovered in Ethiopia and lived 4.4 million years ago. It was named “Ardi,” short for Ardipithecus ramidus.

The Cambrian period had 7000ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere.

That was a time of the perpetual fire.

Even though the solar luminosity at the time was 4% weaker than today, the earth was much hotter due to the free amounts of carbon dioxide.

Slowly chemical weathering and living organisms bound the carbon in the atmosphere so, at the time of the Carboniferous period, it had reached 180ppm.

The earth was much cooler. A wonderful time with 34% oxygen in the air.

Then after this period, flood basalt eruptions, such as the Siberian traps and the Deccan traps released vast amounts of CO2, and this caused the earth to heat up again.

That was an inferno. 90% of all life died.

This followed by slow weathering out of CO2 and subsequent cooling.

When the CO2 levels are in low and balance the earth temperature change due to the Milankovitch cycles. During such period the climate always changes.

We even had ice ages during this period.

Now there is no flood basalt eruption at all. This time it is we humans who released the CO2 in the atmosphere. It took us one hundred years.

Earth will be warm. It will be hot.

(Source: youtu.be slash r7aZ6vqCk2E)

We began with little mutations,
Harmless, or more so beneficial,
We adapted to our love,
With no methods of dispersal,
People thought we couldn’t get any closer,

But your behaviors changed and we began to isolate,
We were stabilized so I hoped for fusion,
But realized that overtime not even reinforcement could’ve helped,

We had our Kingdom set up,
And later we fell into a “Family”,
But you classified me too general,
Now I don’t know where I belong,

My feelings for you were like the Cambrian,
Sadly enough they became a catastrophe,
You started selecting,
Seeing me as worthless,
But I knew I am not one to select,

You looked at me like you’ve studied Phylogenetics,
I was at the most top,
But ended up at the bottom,
You were not natural, but neither was I,
What did our selections favor?

And our relationship turned into cloud and dust,
Sadly it collapsed,
And you left me imprints of lies and hurt,
And words preserved inside me like a cast,

You ingested away my feelings,
I was the pili so attached to you,
But you were an endospore resisting all of me,
You no longer knew what feelings were,

And to you, I was an annual,
Got replaced so quickly,
But I shed tears where the oceans have formed,
And supported you like the roots of trees,

But you were a virus,
A pathogen,
A parasite,
And I was the host,
Blinded by your toxins,

And my cells swelled in favor of you,
You offered me and I gladly took,
I thought I was an obligate,
Surviving off of you,
But I was too mindless to see the real you,

And I was like the Archaea,
Survived the harshest paths for you,
But with a single expression you crushed my world,
And like a Zygomycota you’ve molded our love away,

And sadly enough I couldn’t evolve,
With pain feeling like spikes inside,
I am no longer the magistrate of love,
And love is my killer.

I.

evolving, thunder-struck

amino eventualities

and bio-potentialities

in the muck

re-group, protoplasmic and joyful

singing in the proverbial soup

of circumstances

and random cosmic chances

a song of differentiation

loose ends / ragged strands / loose lines

of poetry: DNA spiral dances

Precambrian time, period of time extending from about 4.6 billion years ago (the point at which Earth began to form) to the beginning of the Cambrian Period, 541 million years ago. Precambrian time encompasses the Archean and Proterozoic eons, which are formal geologic intervals

II.

the wriggling one-celled poet decides

to become complex

takes its time:

geologic / astral eons

twitching and failing

into the fabled tadpole of adaptation

to a godless universe, diverse

in its variegated futility

this idea has been summarized in the mouthful, ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’, which means the development of the individual embryo repeats its alleged evolutionary history. The first thing to say about this dictum, is that ‘law’ it is not!

III.

our fish, now fowl,

proclaims its Archaeopteryx manifesto

standing on Precambrian banks

demanding a return on its investment

in sedimentary overlays:

Ernst Haeckel !  shrieks the avian jokester

The Imaginary Monera: the eating habit and reproductive cycle of an alleged Moneron to which he gave the scientific name, Protomyxa aurantiaca 73 pages of his speculations more important than facts and evidence.

IV.

into the long long corridors

of time’s bad poetry

sleeping off the tadpole nightmare

sprouting flippers, legs, digits, wings

deciding to fly, smashing antediluvian cedars with trilobite tail

upright biped sporting body-hair

you shall prevail

descending from trees in African dreams

misanthropologically *****

gracile / robust (that’s us)

Hey turn that **** up ! yells Piltdown Man

from his evolutionary window

He believed that the only major difference between man and the ape was that men could speak and apes could not. He therefore postulated a missing link which he called Pithecanthropus alalus (speechless apeman) a woman with long lank hair suckling a child.

V.

falling for the lies

of the Lord of the Flies

Zinjanthropus asks quizzically

How much more of this

are you prepared to take ?

misbegotten centuries glimmer:

light years of bad poetry

captive eons of incoherent free verse

as we wait

for the Bronze Age Myths

to begin

There is speak of latency
and pregnant pauses,
for epochs.
From Cambrian to Devonian,
and all things antediluvian.
The stone, the bronze, the golden age.
and the age of wood and wool,
Of wool,
and wood.
Of mahogany,
and mohair.
An age of comfort and kindness,
of nanas wasting idly in rocking chairs,
Knitting sweaters big as continents,
for the sons and daughters,
Of their sons and daughters.
with the loom and swoop and stitch.
While each toc and tic,
Turns grandma to dust
and to death
Then to be latent again,
in a universe of dust.
A star, with a secret harbor,
of virtue.
A constellation, lassoed,
in her honor.
Blessing all with patience
Shining benevolent,
and intentionless,
For all to see.

The words that are thought but never shared between lovers
                that's where I want to set my tent.
The emptiness of a piece of manuscript before a composer scribes their first motif
the rocky landscape before the cambrian explosion
the fabric that makes the dress that lifts the spirit of some lonely ******* a grey day
the clay between the sculptor's fingers
               that's where I want to place my luggage down

the surface, frozen
in the depths, they rest
suspended among ice
crystals

we can't see through
the crust, though we
know they are there,
for simple hook and bait
wake them

within the fine folds
of their brains, the
accumulated wisdom
of a half billion years
guides them to the catch
the promise of full gut

they don't see us through
the ice, we two legged novices
in the kingdom--jesters who lull
them from Cambrian dreams,
to the white light of today

they snap the lure
they flap about on the frozen pond,
we witness their death throes, unaware
what the gasping future holds
for the wretched species
to which we belong

he’s going to falter fold out like a staircase
in the face of
cambrian ice and you’ll hold yourself out like
you could have been absolution itself



you’ll be thinking about the ones that look like they’re comfortable
in their own skin and poked out light
and upward facing rays and upturned faces
and scattered papers



you’ll be versed in angel’s tongues
but paralyzed by syntactic blindness
silenced by the dome and everything thats happening
without you

I know a land of salt
and pepper stalks and moss,
whose jagged, hazy coast
a thousand flowers bears —
of Ireland I boast.

Even now my heart is sick
for a home I never had.
If I were there,
what I would do,
I'll tell to you....

I'd show my love the mountain's nooks,
I'd pounce the foeman's daring rooks,
and plunder every dusty book,
and sleep in emerald vales.
We'd clamber up to a secret cave
and there we'd dwell,
away from the pell-mell,
and fast away in purple robes,
pretending we were noble-born
(for Ireland, we ought to be),
we'd in defiance hunger stave.

See now, her cloud legions marching in step
like flares emerging from the wood.
While horses roam her sunlit plains
and flowers shudder in her breeze;
while puddles form in shallow pools,
my watered mind accustoms trees
of bleak and twisted nature,
on the wild icicle river,
coldly biting my knees.

But here afar away,
there's treasure under every
glistening leaf,
'twixt frond and fern,
bristle and bramble,
and bounding stream.
By daylight,
Eire counts every rock;
at starlight,
assesses her stock.

I know a land
whose greenery bursts
in the morning dew,
and gives hopeful cause
to a hundred generations
of stoic sword-brethren
flashing down the coast,
singing their jolly tune,
as the oak decks are mounted
with freedom's guns
emboldening battle new.

Her amber-gilded name spears through
clouded sea and Cambrian cliff:
if every isle were touched as this!
by saintly light from Atlas' air.
She is the jewel of the isles,
the song of countless souls.
As men march down her
summer roads to meet their
tender-hearted lovers at home in
comfort from callous kings, the
breeze will bring news of another
christening or crossing... for then
each girl will spy him coming, and
make haste to alert the town,
and they will all turn out with joy
to welcome home their darling boy;
to herald the ending of famine and war,
and so they will shout for centuries more!

If time is like an ocean
All moments come and go
Now we seek the shoreline
And now we go below
At the surface shines the sunlight
Where flying fish do leap
While on the volcanic seafloor
Lurk creatures of the Deep
We meet memories in tidal moonlight
With them we swim until the day
But the Cambrian Explosion
        Who can truly say?

Under Rings And Crescent
Meandering Down Stream
Through The Land Of My
Fathers
That Once Carried Their
Dreams
To The Wider Reaches Of
Silty Gravel Plains
That Are Fed And Washed
By Cambrian Rains
Here High Vertical Sandbanks
Crisis Cross The Valley Floors
Allowing The Wye To Empty
Onto English Shores

One Of The Most Scenic Rivers In The UK

Down by some babbling bank,
my past lives superimpose,
Upon my own.
And it was near,
toxic waters,
where I was born.
And primordial bubbles
unearthed a bone.
From which,
I was fashioned and formed.

Though ghosting tongues,
do bobble and flap,
In  gaping cambrian mouths.
they are mute, finite and fixed.
Which does none to please me,
in my present state.
Stoic and unashamed
like a marble crying fountain,
whose tears reach to the saints,
The cobblers.
the warlords,
and snakes,
that I might have been.

So if I regress,
so far,
To the point of hatred
I will reserve it
for those,
Who deserve it:
Those preceding me.
because they never did give any good advice.

I'm worried about my heart
From the pre-cambrian period
To the advent of modern medicine
My heart beat with feeling in the mesoderm

Put your fire
With my fire
And we'll burn brighter
Burn brighter

And I feel my heart is weak
Maybe it stops when the beat drops
And I'll be dead on a stage
While the band still plays

A Cambrian explosion
         That is what I need,
         That might calm my troubled ocean
         And beget me anew indeed.

I'm worried about my heart
From the pre-cambrian period
To the advent of modern medicine
My heart beat with feeling in the mesoderm

Put your fire
With my fire
And we'll burn brighter
Burn brighter

And I feel my heart is weak
Maybe it stops when the beat drops
And I'll be dead on a stage
While the band still plays

Dead beat (5 cents).
Dead pan (10 cents).
Dead dead Franklin head

Early deaths –
Casualties of the war of the changing seasons
Brings me back to a time without reason
When all I knew were the leaves and the road and my family –
My family  -
We, us, together, now!
Quick, gather in front of the tree with too many decorations,
Too many forced memories –
Do you remember?
Of course I do, Momma,
I know it.

Of returning fearful from a night of supervised sneaking
Uniform series of street lamps keeping us safe
But we did not know,
Knew only the fear and the fun and the one night a year they broke the laws of all that we know and mixed against the will of the world like oil and water
Together now

“Deformed Discourse” –
The body monstrous,
Explains my professor.
But where is my body?
Monstrous – of course I know –
But the body monstrous –
The body –
I think I’m better off without.
I’ve spent two years without a body
And I only miss it when a new one begins to creep on my bones
And I want to run, run away from
The settling, the thousand sufferings manifesting themselves in the forms of slopes, rivers, valleys
Etched deeply with the urgency of the years.

Oh yes – it’s a long way back to the Garden of Eden.
Even then,
Did hurricanes shake the foundations of the earth?
Did they ever cease?

We cannot see where we are going
Hurtling through the abstract of billions of collective souls
That’s a star, we say, that’s a conglomeration of gas reacting to give us heat.
There’s a planet,
We say,
Aggregations of solid matter drawn into itself –
Drawn to circling its parent material, again and again.
For years,
For ever.

Does the tree feel growing pains as its Cambrian layer holds its breath and expands?
Does it take into account the thousand other entities which drain its life blood?
The rabbit doesn’t know,
Shivering in the snow beneath the drooping needles of the conifer.
The sapsucker doesn’t know,
Drinking it all,
And leaving the rest to weep down the bleeding tree.
We don’t know,
The sounds of our saws retching back and forth drown out our inhibitions.

I wonder if the last lynx
To sneak through Wisconsin
Knew it was the last,
Knew its loneliness
Knew the trail it left through the snow
Would forever haunt its disciples.

I wonder if
The swooping hawks crying out
The streamlined white tail leaping through brambles
The silent oaks painting the sky with their fingers stretched upwards –
Do they know what we have done to life, to ourselves?
Do we?

Pennies clang in their cage
1,2,3,4,5
It hurts my head
6,7,8,9,10
To count every single
11,12,13,14,15
Moment of time wasted
Again and again
They, them, together now!

We will roll them together

And promise to promise ourselves

That it was all worth it


As they transfer from sweaty palm to shaking hand

I'm worried about my heart
From the pre-cambrian period
To the advent of modern medicine
My heart beat with feeling in the mesoderm

Put your fire
With my fire
And we'll burn brighter
Burn brighter

And I feel my heart is weak
Maybe it stops when the beat drops
And I'll be dead on a stage
While the band still plays

The big bang, Hiroshima, Dynamite.
We all have a fascination with explosions.
They excite us, terrify us, confuse us, define us.
Yet, over 500 million years ago an explosion took place that shook the very fabric of life.
An explosion with fallout seen around us ever day.
An explosion that led to the dawn of man.

The Cambrian explosion, unlike the big bang didn't happen all at once, but it seems like it. While earth had spent the last 3 billion years at a slow crawl through evolution, from accidental lipid membranes and spontaneous RNA to bacteria, protists. Life moved at a much slower pace. The Cambrian explosion changed that! In roughly 25 million years life went from mostly soft, slimy creatures to having strong structures! This lead to more complex creatures with more complex behavior! It was the ripples of this explosion that allowed a simple ape to pick up a rock. To sharpen a stick. To stand, walk, run. To become man. To learn, to pass on memes as well as genes! To create language and communication! To read this very poem.

In a world without the Cambrian explosion, we might as well have skipped the big bang too.

desperation, isolation, endurance
             learning to wait
             destiny and fate

Father Greeley gave me Ireland
I gave Trinity him

Larry Bird alone
In the Celtics gym

My youngest son is Cambrian
Cambrian can swim

Katniss Everdeen
Takes the place of Prim

       The odds. Slim.

A Toyota's a Toyota
I'm about to drive again
It's been a couple years
Look out USA!

See me up in Boston
See me Shakespeare Staunton
See me to Seattle
Lonely Lost Highway

Gonna visit my young children
Maybe an old friend
Maybe Florida
Cannot truly say

Concerts once again
Movies in the darkness
Irish restaurants
Are fairies truly fey?

Mrs Malaprop got away, a way, I mean, a way
wit words

she can say shitistic stuff as if stuffit were a joy,

when she says it, while
telling
still silken legs crosse demurely,

the delicate ankle

that made monks blush and blurt out
confession,
MY GAWD,

rolling, clockwise, as she sees it,
counter to my

FPS POV, but we both see the direction,

east, the earth is turning east from now
to then when
you become wel here in now.

Recall the lesson of flat land, whoever taught it
coulda been AE Wilder-smith hammered

Jael's nail home,
Couldabin, mightabeen Sagan made the killing blow

young earth shattered.

Fossils seeped their living substance into stone,

petrific, ter ific magnetic trick of missed percepticons

fired fully of the intention, I must mention,

stretching truth to cover conjecture when ideas

like what happened in the "Cambrian" being being
explosive become

purposeful in minds of men, wombed or un---

--- once
--- before you knew, that hapt.
--- and, god, did men make up storys.

on track. Back when men first imagined doing

making, art arose and
we all know
a rose, by any other name is a rose.

That's the idea in self evidence. It's a key to
the Declaration of Independence making sense,

at the level of we, the people, who know
self-evident non-thingables, when we hold them.

At first, they feel like sleepy puppies. These
truths we hold selfevidently right.

Alam Sayed

My dormant dreams remained in the primordial soup.
As an amoeba I dreamt about you eons ago.
In the sacred hollow of my mind lives your shadow.
Scrawny leaves of memory in the gutter of my brain
remain fossilized.
I waited for you in the Precambrian mud.
I roamed in the puzzling field of Cambrian jungle.
I dreamt about you being sheltered inside the body of a dinosaur;
Among acid rains my dreams were burned.
I searched for you amid the cry of stars.
My dreams were washed away during Noah's flood.
I wept for you near the stones of pyramids.
I reluctantly cut the throats of my blood brothers
in the Colosseum of Rome,
and fought the ****** battles with Spartacus;
and I saw our blood bloom as red flowers
in the reddened field of Capua.

I didn’t want to be a witch hunter
in the muddy medieval jungles,
and I didn’t want to be a gladiator of modern times.
I didn’t want to be a vampire of corporate age
******* the blood of my postmodern friends.
Perhaps, you will never be born in the craters of
ever hungry tyrants.
And, perhaps, in the world of fanatics and *******
you should never be born.

the purpose of the artist
is always to deepen the mystery

so said Francis Bacon
from the pages of Irish and English history

I do not disagree
(and I told her his feet were blistery)

but in this disenchanted world
it would have to be in a list for free:

                          Wetheral - Cambrian
                         Book of Kells - Burke
                          Corvallis - Farrington
                          Backstreets - Dziedzic
                            Carrboro - Greeley
                       Wake County jail - Sallyport
                                   Hitch Hikin’ etc ...