(i)

Let us cross-section the first ocean.

Brisbane on a good, humid day.

Wavelets of lava – half metre

magma swells obeying the sun’s

mind control. The universal

court order breached by the outer

crust’s recidivism. Basalt castaway

marooned in the Earth’s gravitational

detention centre. The halal moon,

on a temporary, three billion year visa.

This astronomical pariah,

a bad influence on water.

(ii)

Then, the great cooling off period.

The mutual obligation of hardened

attitudes, granite mastermind,

sediments of geo-thermal resolve.

Negotiating powder burnt boundaries.

Water in its larval stage; steam

clouded continents raw as new bone.

What price that first droplet

expelled the moment it formed,

cooked on a hot plate of stone?

Wet phoenix of primordial rock legend.

Hot clay robots’ thought bubbles.

(iii)

But condense it did.

The genesis sea, a child’s puddle.

Rain, the new order fell for centuries,

a damp millennia. A drumbeat unimaginable.

The epistemology of torrential, downpour,

& cyclonic. A gargantuan paper, scissors,

rock game – geomorphologic battle of sexes.

Sheets of water won.

(iv)

When was the neuter-Earth first gendered?

When the ocean swamped mountains labial?

Was it ever a good time for marriage?

Mother Sea/Father Time – the oldest

dichotomies die hardest. Their pre-nuptial

agreements drawn up by protozoa.

The first children spoiled rotten by life.

(v)

After a while things settled down.

Everything became glacial habit, wind

routine. The ‘wild years’ put behind them.

Only a volcanic outburst here & there,

skull-splitting geyser fits,

a tectonic shrug of the shoulders.

Dissatisfaction caught nature’s roving eye.

Accessories were purchased – scales,

leaves, wings, fur. All the mod cons.

They were always trying to up the ante.

Climb social strata’s that crushed

ego under great pressure. Cell layers

covered the original exciting bedrock.

Early soft bodies left no impression.

Hard to imagine now, like a 2^nd cousin

dead in the war as the salad days

crept into eons.

(vi)

The Great Valentino light could dazzle

ocean momentarily before his overtures

were blocked, spectrum-by-spectrum.

Their dark film unprocessed.