Serpentine of hard green sheen
Born in hydrothermal’s spleen
Where pressured, metamorphosed plate,
Converged at boundaries’ Vulcan gate
To lay in tumbled disarray
Where octopi and dolphin play.
From olivine and pyroxene
Derived the crystal serpentine
Through Hellfires’ metamorphic fate
Now crystalized to Greenstone state.
There lying in the golden light
Of mountain stream in tumbled sight
Refracting in the morning sun
That glint of green since time begun.
M.
That glint of green, a jade boulder
in the tumbling mirth of a plummeting
mountain stream in New Zealands'
wild Southwest.
Jacksons Bay
Fiordland National Park
June 2017
A explanation delivered to Karinnjinba of the meaning of this poem.
Convergent plate tectonics cause subterranean layers of mineralization to be exposed in the process of mountain formation.
This poem is a celebration of the formation of greenstone through its transitions from from serpentine a glassy green layer situated twixt the continental plate and the mohorovic discontinuity...through exposure to intense heat from nearby magma intrusion and the incredible pressure applied in its upward ****** to the light. The transfer through crystalization, in the heating and cooling of the rock through its passage to its discovery as a water worn boulder in an alpine stream...Greenstone or Jade or Pounamu as the Maori call it....A magnificent, translucent, glassy green rock carved and valued, historically by the maori as cultural taonga and weaponry and valued worldwide as a classic gemstone of metamorphic origin.
M.
