Mining Stars (from here)

The President said
plutonium supplies
were good in the pits.
I wondered what it meant-
so I dug 963 feet
below the surface
seeking that sinking
heavy metal, heaving
twice its weight in gold,
yet primeval and silvery-
precious.

First made by supernovae,
naturally stardust,
radioactively broadcast
its position
through in the universe
-this one
time
expansion.

Discovered in Berkley,
in a February-
back then, 75 years ago, by a Glenn
Seaborg-not a Cyborg,
who then sent it to Los Alamos
in another February
for further detonation
and investigation
of astronomic instability.

With seven crystallographic phases
it elementary amazes scientists
in its fractalized dynamic destinies.
With differing densities, quite capably
able to decimate cities,
by morphing its own mass;
molten, hyper-reactive,
subject to spontaneous ignition,
irradiated with vaporous
breath, like making plus
molecules
ad-here
plutonic at the core.

Mass casualties of the atomic age
Man as kin, or mannequins staged
as markers amongst
the desert blooms
carbon footprints on the floral carpet
show we were here
in Plutonic Purgatory
hunting and gathering
wishing upon stars and
digging up disasters
in the diabolical desert
seeking forgiveness
in a cactus bloom.



Image of butterfly on desert bloom of zinnia By Mike Howard, BLM New Mexico State Office Botanist [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Things we take for granite

Walking by a pile of ordinary granite
my daughter noticed a glimmer.
Delighted with the sparkly sight,
she asked me why it shone so,
It's just DG, I said plainly,
So, you don't know,
she replied rhetorically.

I too remember when
the world was more than real
you could feel the newly forming
foundations building up
under you, from deep inside
your hot energetic core
spreading slowly like land
determined and undeterred
not oblivious and permeable
nor in the hurry of water
its mad dash with a splash
molten rock chooses to ooze instead
I remember a time
when steam jets barely cooled our fires
and together we tamed the wild world,
before us digging up and burying forevermore
weary from moving around in endless Revolutions
We finally settled.

Like throwing pepper around the perimeter
so pedestrian people wont notice
tremors of short fused attentions
unable to make the connection, cross the bridge
to take the leap, to draw a rough line,
to reconnect
the connection of
the extra and ordinary.

From leading edges, subdued and stable
the matrix locks its labyrinth
in the basement
of continental islands.
Granite is there.
Unanimously equigranular,
metamorphically unique,
on this marble rolling
in concrete space.

Catching the light just right
the quartz and phenocrysts insist
on throwing off latent sparks;
like kindled memories of plutonic days
mingled in potassium feldspar rays
streaked pink with passion
the blushing boulders
pushed by Sisyphus
eternally carry us forward
as though not moving a pebble,
or grain, or granule, granum, granite
swallowing our diamonds along the way
decomposing
and eroding
molding
the upper crust
down to
their carbon core.

One should never ignore
the things we take for granite.



Image by Halvard Hatlen (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.