NaPoWriMo 02

Waterworld, the seas that surround

the lands of all the earth, are temporary.

They grow and shrink to fill the spaces

between the plates that dodgem

over the planet’s crust.

Iapetus washed Gondwana shores,

the Panthallasic covered half the globe.

Sediments in Tethys formed the Gulf’s oil

before Atlantic opened. Today’s oceans

form familiar blue patterns on maps,

but they too will change with time

and tectonics. Some day the Pacific will close,

as continents come together

in a new Pangaea.

I look out on a smaller sea

that’s swung from land to water

as sea levels changed. Mammoth bones

and tree stumps from Doggerland

are dredged up in nets, when Britain

was a part of the main.

I’ve dabbled in it, paddled in it,

confirmed it’s cold, even in summer,

in this latitude. But the waters

that ring us know no barriers,

pass unflagged from Europe

to America, Africa, India

and circle the chill land at the heart

of the Southern Ocean.

Colin Will

02/04/2013