Mountain Snapshot
On the top edge of my iPad
a mountain sits in monumental stillness,
as if motion was frozen at its core,
and would remain so forevermore.
Taking a picture suddenly
becomes a serious business:
My snapshot instinct stalls
before this geological Buddha
robed in granite grey,
unflinching since its very beginning
in the cold light of day.
At the bottom of the screen
I see my toes flexing
their tiny history,
dwarfed by 300 million years of the earth’s throes,
subdued to strata, the mountain’s mega load.
Is this the past’s most reliable witness?
What upheavals are still to come?
Will its rock-of-ages silence be
shattered by a meteoric thump?
Or a nuclear war waged by
Donald Trump?
Some prophets say
the next mass extinction
is already on its way,
the sixth in 500 million years
and the first to be man-made.
With such magnitude
there is little hope for
mice or men
mountains, on the other hand,
will probably still be there
when the whole process
begins or ends again.