Continental Drift, a poem

The African continent is breaking in two.
And Europe and Asia are fighting each other.
This is creating the Himalayas, as one giant plate
swallows the other.

California isn't a contiguous part
of the rest of the West Coast--it's drifting away
while the East and the West
push into each other;
that's how the Rocky Mountains were made.

Hawaii's the result
of the Earth splitting apart
and the magma revealed building up mountains.
As the crack moves on, the fire scabs over
and the water starts wearing the islands away.
Further on, new islands start building up under the waves.

You can track the movement of the earth underneath us.
It dances, in a time that shifts like molasses
or slower, liquid like glass, but still moving forwards
or sometimes back, or away. Land being eaten or land being made,
these fragments of rock floating on lava
give the illusion of rock-solid stability,
no matter how much or what changes.