Looking Through Stone – Poems About the Earth – by Susan Ioannou

Poet Susan IoannouExcerpt from Susan Ioannou’s book of poetry Looking Through Stone – Poems About the Earth. If you would like to order Susan Ioannou’s book of poetry, go to Your Scrivener Press

GEOLOGIST

He bids on the obscure: a speck
inching across kilometres of scrub  
to map and pick samples out of sediments,  
or cragged above evergreens, unseen
balancing a magnetometer
to listen to rocks.

He is a gambler:
under snake bellies,
between goat hooves
he trusts silver and zinc are waiting
and surfaces like scooped cream
sprout opals,
or powdered from sunshine are sulphur,
or gritty with Mediterranean blue
hold copper.

Also, he is wary: what glitters
may be the dream
—of fools.
Grade must be tested.
What grams to the tonne?
Where too angled, too deep?

A gambler bets
against absolutes.
How much should he dare
to open the Earth
to pick at her secrets
hundreds of metres down?