Badlands
(Down
At the End of Time As We Know It)
Down where the river
runs
slow and shallow
the gentle flow of water over gravel
belies the cataclysmic
origins of these badlands
in the floodwaters of the deluge
at the end of the last ice age
when a huge raging
river of glacial run off
carved this deep
chasm down through time
through rainforests of coal
down through oceans of sandstone
sculpting a primeval,
surrealist landscape
Millions and millions
of light years ago here
in the fog shrouded antedeluvian dawn
long before the
river carved out these canyons
giant ferns once grew thick
dawn redwoods grew tall
and a humid, subtropical
forest blossomed
with freshly evolved
species of flowering plants
The lush swamps
where they once flourished
now
long since then buried
beneath a dry, windswept
inland sea of prairie
"Every metre of
strata...a million years"
Red sandstone, siltstone,
coal and shale
and the alluvial
sediments of Cretaceous rivers
exposed by erosion
beneath layers of clay
Thirty feet up
beneath a dark seam of coal
a thin band of iridium marks the time
when a thick cloud
of asteroid dust blackened the sky
and two thirds of all life on the planet died
Above the bluffs
on the wide open prairie
a couple of horse
head oil pumps rock and roll
pumping deep into
the reefs of Devonian oceans
sucking up ancient
cesspools of crude fossil fuel
Fuel that feeds
our dinosaur machines
the primordial ooze
we use to drive us around
feeding the plastic economy
fixing a hole in the cold, cold ground
The hydrogen dynamo
in the sky
burns the badlands
red with atomic light
where wind shaped hoodoos
like modern sculpture
stand stark and smooth
...curved like time...
© 2006 Gary Lee