Geosonnet 39

The Kelly Caves, where bushrangers once hid

Were shelter of a venerated kind.

Cro-Magnon ancestors did not forbid

Shelter, and art, in caverns thus confined.

But holes in rock as habitat might date

To early in our planet’s history

The microbes and the cavemen can relate

Archean prelude Pleistocene story

Both sheltered in a mineral cavity.

The upside-down microstromatolites

Cling to the roof, outlaws of gravity

Not methane, autotroph metabolites

   These outlaws hid beneath the algal mats

   Kerogenated troglodytic bats

Geology 44 51

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

Geosonnet 38

A Daal is more than just a spicy meal

Tsunamis, mighty earthquakes it informs

Shear diffusivity it can reveal

The mechanism by which it deforms.

The humble lentil, pressed into a box

begins to slide, but not on just one plane

The shear migrates when grain rotation locks

Without localization of all strain

The superlentils, strong but not congealed

Not Marvel men with tights and curried food

Anastamosing fabrics are revealed

Transposing when the pulses become skewed.

A legume in the larder shows the way

A devastating earthquake slides today.

Geology 44 183

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