by Jim Zola
Deep Time
Geological time — mud music —
copper bands light years in the ground —
we walked over stones — a kind
of bridge — my father tasted the years —
brought them up and put them on the tongue —
that way, crystal brought its salt —
out past ships in the white air —
cliffs or steppes – periods
and ages — the plate tectonics come
apart — I watched them coming in,
the oilmen of East Texas —
they come from hardness, like
my father — from sea light
and fracture — they sit on a stool
at JJ’s — now in the traffic
of bird shadow talking of the people
they see in the scene in front
or in the past — the brittle pieces —
wind on the other side —
seepage — some rocks slide
across a dry lake — no one knows
how it happens – dirt gets up
to walk across dust.
Ralph Burns is the author of seven books, most recently, but not yet, winner of the Blue Lynx Poetry Prize and published by Lynx House Press, and Ghost Notes, winner of the Field Poetry Prize and published by Oberlin College Press. His poems have recently appeared in Image Journal, The Common, Crazyhorse, and Georgia Review.
Jim Zola is a poet and photographer living in North Carolina.