Geosonnet 35

The bluestone of which Melbourne is constructed

Is fresh basalt, from NVP derived

And yet no ocean slab is here subducted

No spreading ridge or hotspot has survived

With late Cretaceous Antarctic divorce

The margin should be passive, fires spent

And yet there must be an upwelling force

As mantle melting is quite evident.

Cratonic root plows through Asthenosphere

The slowest ship to ever voyage north

Yet models show convection will appear

So decompression melts can issue forth.

  Melb's gloomy architecture isn't fake

  The town's built from Australia's stony wake.

Geology 42 1031

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Geosonnet 34

Our bodies' carbon, oxygen derives

From hearts of stars, extinguished into dust

Life resurrects these molecules, and strives

For meaning, ere death follows, as it must.

The lifeless gardening of impact rocks

Makes dust of stones and boulders on the Moon.

Inevitable crumbling, by the clocks

Chonometrize the sands of time, so soon

The robot eyes, which scan the moon for heat

Will see long-dead ejecta cooling fast

But when time's millstone's work is incomplete

The radiating warmth of rock will last.

  While entropy will not release its hold

   Observing it lets history unfold

Geology 42 1059

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Geosonnet 33

The swiftest planet, closest to the sun

Is roasted in the star's infernal gaze.

In polar craters, dawn has n'er begun

Eternal darkness freezes gasses there.

Though sunshine never penetrates the holes,

Reflected light creates a subtle gloam

night vision robot, orbiting the poles

While Earthly radar guides the cam'ra home.

Prokofiev hosts lightly colored frost

In other craters ice is black as char

A lag from which the water has been lost?

Organic/ sulfur condensate? Like tar?

   From springs? Or solar wind? A comet's blow?

   From whence this water comes we do not know.

 Geology 42 1051

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Geosonnet 32

Southwest from where Doc Livingstone was found

The grand conglomerate caps old black shales.

The rhenium, in micro-pyrite bound,

Can date when diamictite ice prevails.

The wild’s call, beyond the Yukon Gold

Hides ancient glaciation in the wilds.

To test the Snowball Earth, we ask, “How old”

These jigsaw continents, frozen or mild?

Just past the pleasure dome of Kublai Khan

Mongolia preserves more ancient rock

The age determination’s not forgone

We must assess the isotopic clock.

   For fifty million years, and then for five,

   The planet froze, yet somehow stayed alive.

Geology 43 459

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