movers and shakers

Geology and biology

move mountains and men
But what teleology moves

men to move mountains

and mountains to move men?

Ocean floor spreads, squeezed

Sediment beds, upwards teased

The plates sliding, gliding

Riding each other

Subducting, obducting

To the depths of molten hell, 

the heights of frozen hell

Grinding ground 

On what grounds?

What madness lies down under?

Tears continents asunder.

Ridges entrenched

Spew crust, recycled

What hearth

fires the earth beneath?

Is all earthly activity 

but radioactivity?

What celestial fuel burns

to light our bodily fires?

The warm glow of a lone star,

Not far.

This fission, that fusion

Dry repetition, wet confusion

of breaking up and getting it on

Without gravity

that binds us apart,

Circling, spinning Earth

Rising, setting Sun

Wouldn’t

Beings geothermal,

metamorphosed, ascend

the cold, dark, vulcan lift

to a barren sphere, adrift.