Imprints of the Tethys Sea

Long ago the plates
of our planet moved apart.
The Tethys sea drowned
leaving behind its light still
rippling on rocks.
Long ago the plates
of our planet moved apart
and came closer to us.
Keeping for us the impression
of water on rocks, bringing us
signs, marks of memory
not our own. Keeping us,
if we’d believe, in the deep time
held in the bones of a living earth.

Like plates of the planet moved
apart, of drownings we don’t
yet speak, it isn’t for us to know
what will become. If the patter
of playful feet, if the touch of
small hands will learn from
impressions of scars not their own
of our light and our dark,
of our time. Not what we
variably recall of our lived lives,
but what we know in our bones
without proof as our Tethys seas.