Geosonnet 46

If decompression melting is enhanced

When glacial loads are washed away by rain

Then letting go the ice sheets that advanced

Might wake volcanoes in an arc again.

Unloading helps silicic lavas blow

And then the magma chambers must recharge

Desire for huge eruptions simmers low

Five thousand years ‘till ash beds become large

A glacial load weighs heavy on the soul

Unfreezing lets the middle crust rebound

Explosive lava, free from amphibole

Bursts forth like summer flowers from the ground.

   Frost claims ice will suffice to wreck the world.

   But should it melt, eruptions are unfurled.

Geology 44 251

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Geosonnet 45

When zircon needs to leave its life behind

Clastic witness protection can be used.

Trace element analysis can’t find

The host whose hospitality’s refused.

Once protolith identity is gone

Stool pigeon phase inclusions spill the beans.

When D value deductions can be drawn

In apatite or sphene, we have the means

To fingerprint magmatic strontium

Deducing silica at the same time

Then using cerium and yttrium

Included zircon’s fingered for its crimes.

  A river cruise while host weathers to dust:

  A sedimentary crime of hate, or lust?

Geology 44 91

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Geosonnet 44

Antarctica’s a frozen realm of ice

Yet troglodytic hydrospheres remain

Radar reflectors, frozen lakes entice

Ice fishermen to see what they contain

Before the ice age, glacial domes were seas

Below sea sediments can still be found.

The lake is mostly glac’ers which unfreeze

Trapped ocean water seeps up from the ground.

The surface sediments are oxidized.

The sulfate in the brine is unreduced.

Lest oxygen at depth leave us surprised

Dissolved O₂ in meltwater’s deduced.

   Alas, no fish were sampled by the drill

   Just microbes that an ice age couldn’t kill

Geology 44 347

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Geosonnet 43

Marsupial invaders from the South

Make North America their newfound home.

Alpacas, llamas, spitting from the mouth

Run off to South America to roam.

The rocks in Panama suggest the land

Connected continents by Miocene.

Pliocene movement, on the other hand

Means radiative retardation’s seen.

A sea of trees, could rainforest impair

Migration of savannah-dwelling beast?

The ice age brought colder and drier air

And grasslands on which ungulates can feast.

   Tectonics may have built the bridge of land.

   Ten million years unused, we understand.

Geology 44 375

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Geosonnet 42

An alpha particle can break the bonds

Of diamond as it crashes to a halt.

Each glowing lattice defect corresponds

To trace uranium ore by default.

Proterozoic water then dissolves

These min’rals when they weather from the ground.

The age of weathering therefore resolves

Why He but no U in these stones are found.

The sediment’ry age is reconciled

With orphan daughter isotopes of lead

Archean atmosphere O₂ reviled.

It must have been in groundwater instead.

   So read this study; cite it frequently.

   (Disclaimer: journal article by me.)

Geology 44 527

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Geosonnet 41

The rock of rocks, zircon is not disturbed

As mountains grow, then wash into the sea.

Its isotopic clock is not perturbed

Providing billion year chronometry.

But like Smaug’s waistcoat, or Achillies’ heel

The Earth’s timekeeper has a fatal strain

A brine containing fluorine is ideal

For mobilizing metals from this grain

Earth’s body’s precious fluids rearrange

The normally immobile REE

And actinides, and other metals strange

To fluid induced rock mobility.

   The thermal history is not innate

   When heat producing elements migrate.

Geology 44 15

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Geosonnet 40

The muddy bosom sunset turns to gold

Contrary runs to playa, or to sea.

But though the flow of human blood seems old

‘tis but a spray, seen by geology.

The shady banks, by forests overgrown

Are stabilized by roots of growing trees.

Far different are the rivers Langston’s known

To those which ran ere plants emerged from seas.

The math predicts, and Tombador confirms

Meanders become braids without a plant.

The shallow floodplain channels build up berms.

The mud in verdant floodplains now is scant.

   So when at last we cross the Styx, beware:

   Its lifeless banks will split the channels there.

Geology 44 203

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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

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