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

METAMORPHIC

The Earth is never still.
Even as it crumbles
it is building,
great plates pushing
sediments up from the oceans
or sliding them under the continents.

There massive heat and stress
flatten minerals into bands
or leaf them into layers
or squeeze their particles so tight
atomic patterns rearrange
and recrystallize
limestone roughness into marble, 
sandstone into quartzite,
shale to slate.

Deepest and hottest,
diamonds are hardened.
Higher, beryls and topaz cool.
Like sulphur,
without any air some form
as minerals and bacteria mingle
or, with oxygen, are reborn
like a brassy chalcopyrite
deepened to azurite blue.

Even the oldest,
like a foliated gneiss,
after remelting into magma,
hiss back up volcanic vents
and overflow as mountains
—repeating Earth’s cycle.