Earth Sciences

in the museum of...


Cloudy light descends through skylights
into the museum case, coaxing colours
to reveal themselves: the peacock's rival,
azurite; verdigris of malachite; Romania'a
strange marcasite for vampire women
of the night, side by side with tourmaline
and lobes of gleaming haematite, lapis
from the Andes and its nearest neighbour,
atacamite; selenite like crystals of the moon;
garnet, galena, fluorite: trapped in glass
and atrophied, do they detect the rain
outside? Do they, in their chthonic trance,
partake of rhythms now denied?

If these amputated samples could somehow
reunify with matrix or with mother-lode,
would they respond to open skies,
the gift of water percolating down
to Earth's most private vaults,
dissolving salts, reacting
with terrestrial cells and building-blocks?

I register distinctions between jasper,
quartz and lemonite, fascinated by the forms
that Gaia hides from common sight.