Alfred Wegener Speaks to His Wife
Laurasia has divorced Gondwanaland.
Enormous inland seas and vast primeval
rainforests turn to desert through upheaval
of continents, which group and then disband.
Great rock formations crumble into sand.
In consequence, the climate turns uncivil
and ecosystems vanish. Neither evil
nor good, tectonic plates break up, unplanned.
If something sturdy as a continent
is ripped apart by earthquakes and subduction,
crust melting into magma, rocks entombed
in Hell, then we of thin integument,
who bear our own upheavals and corruption,
will drift apart as well. All love is doomed.
(First appeared in Measure, Volume II, 2007)
