Deep Time

Time counts, and keeps counting. Swiftly fly the years.
People, empires, species, come and go.
Continents drown, rise, dry out, drown again. Rinse, repeat.
The sun grows old and ill,
the great-grandcopies of our children’s children
play bingo in the last airdome,
waving their cilia, getting sillier.
Hell freezes over, the stars come right, the cows come home.
Your call has advanced in the queue
and will be answered, yea I say unto you,
by the next available service consultant.

Made of

Weevils and lice and plagues of mice
Tempests and gales and cold sea-snails
Needles and pins and monkey skins
Thickets and thorns and tall proud horns
Blossom and bees and gentle trees
Frankincense and fire

Beaks and hooks and buried books
Beasts from tapestries
Sighs and scars and scattered stars
Warrens and snares and lies
Harps and hares and magic squares
A hundred shining eyes

Owls and crows and old hedgerows
Weeds and wells and distant bells
Flies and frogs and hollow logs
A nest of wool and wire

Greening sod and growing wood
Wine and silk and foxes’ milk
Puddles and roots and muddy boots
Foam and fish and ice