Geosonnet 16

The strontium which weathers from the land

Is held by teeth and shells beneath the waves

Their creatures live, then die, interred in sand

with isotopes in stratigraphic graves.

The greatest dying Earth has ever seen

Initiated the Triassic time

Before the ants evolved, rock weathering

Was temperature dependent, leaching lime.

Warm mud in post-apocalyptic waste

Bereft of vegetation, washed away.

And Gaia, both hungover and disgraced,

Left complex biomes for another day.

  She sobered up in five or six epochs

  But those hard times forever changed the rocks.

Geology 42 779

Other geosonnets: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64  65 66