Glass Eel

Who was there when Pangaea split?

Who saw borders break, and continents drift

When shifting rock and heaves of time?

Cleft plates apart, pushed ice to brine

The trade winds and the westerlies

The push and pull of the gyre

The glass eel chasing estuaries

To fjord and fen, the mud and mire

And as the leaves are doomed to bruise

And the fruit is bound for falling

We are all compelled to move

Our busy skies and racing ocean

Our strange and heady motion

Who saw the muddy eddies and the sediment

And the weathered cliffs forging monuments

To the labyrinths that the rivers filled?

The days disrupt and the nights distill

The trade winds and the westerlies

The push and pull of the gyre

The glass eel chasing estuaries

To fjord and fen, the mud and mire

And as the leaves are doomed to bruise

And the fruit is bound for falling

We are all compelled to move

Our busy skies and racing ocean

Our strange and heady motion

We are all compelled to move, side by side

While roaming cliff and waning moon keep time

For the tiny travelers on ocean currents

Or the desperate flight from the east

The steady shifting of populations

Or the yearly forfeit of the trees

We are all compelled to move, side by side

While roaming cliff and waning moon keep time

Yet here we are in our vice and vanity

Mindless of the irony

That while patient science adds fact to fact

Hasty man draws lines on maps