It happens so slowly you barely notice.
in time, things you thought long settled,
will begin to rise.
it’s called uplift.

It is true of the garden plot in back
that seems to grow rocks like new potatoes.

It is true of continents, explaining why they collide.

Our granite crust sits on a molten core
which is tugged at by sun and moon.

Over time, the wind and tide
causes cracks and fissures
dividing the mantle into continental plates
holding mountain ranges, oceans and such.

These plates slip and slide, they abut
and push against one another,
locked in apparent dispute.

Eventually, the plates will bucket,
one plate sliding under the other,
this is continental drift.

Major realignments,
earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions
are some of the consequences
of the conservation of momentum,
more commonly known as, spin.

we spin around the sun with a diurnal cycle
resulting in night and day.

The molten core
beneath the heavy plates is a furnace
of iron which also spins, creating electromagnetism,
the GPS that birds and salmon use
to find their way home.

It happens in you,
how the soul emerges,
moved by longing,
upheaval after upheaval,
called by truth,
called by beauty,
called by love.

It pushes its way to the light.

Is it true, as that song goes,
that you don’t know what you have ’til it’s gone?

Can love be measured by its absence,
by the crater that it left,
by that ache you do nothing about,
or the cups of longing that you drink,
less frequently now,
to think on loss?