Geology Lessons
I look back through the window of a Greyhound Bus
stopped by the side of the road.
Before the cell phone or CB radio—
I travel back to the boy and girl wrought golden
in this-moment-before-we-grow-old.
His earth brown eyes reveal
a passion for simple rock face,
the feel of striation beneath well-trained hands.
Along the shoulder of the Massachusetts Turnpike,
in an age before water bottles or sensible snacks,
I swallow whole Precambrian tales
of North American time—
volcanic islands colliding.
He confesses as if in terrestrial prayer
how he cried out, that his hands
caressed the crevices, lingered inside—
the smell like honeysuckle and rain.
I lean in as the cars speed by,
as the other passengers curse or sleep.
Until the driver flags down a second bus,
until the natural frameworks of a life—
light-tipped and double-windowed
tumble us toward separate tectonic plates
and away through the ages of 19, 21, & more—
