The fruited plain and shining mountains

This is a rather lengthy poem but considering it covers 100 million years of history perhaps not too long. Recent finds in geology have determined that the tallest mountains that ever existed once stood where the Rockies now stand. Over several tens of millions of years they eroded into what we now call the great plains. The current mountains were upthrust several million years after the original mountains disappeared. The Mandan Indians, who only viewed the snow covered peaks from a distance, referred to them as the Shining Mountains.

I have chosen the Couplet form for this poem (even though it is now out of favor as being too sing-songee) as a tribute to Robert Service who was a master of this and other forms, but no matter the structure, each poem told a story. This is the story of the creation of the great plains and shining mountains told in ten separate sections.

The Land Between (I)

The Plains

The heat from the congealing mass

Sparked the atmosphere's boiling gas,

It blew from the center of the sphere,

The planet's marrow, year after year.

Great mountains of ash and stone,

From within the earth were blown.

The sky wept for sixty thousand years,

Filling vast oceans with salty tears,

Washing the mountain's fiery peaks,

Flooding all with rivers and creeks.

Great seas started from a simple pool,

Then the atmosphere began to cool.

The freezing air, brought snow and sleet,

And soon it lay like a giant sheet

Glistening spires, radiant cones,

Shining mountains made of stone.

Water ran down the flinty spines,

Filling the cracks with icy vines.

The ice proved stronger than stone,

No one heard the mountains moan.

Stoney tears, down the mountain's side,

In fifty million years, the spires died.

A thousand forests, thousands more,

Grew and died on the mountains shore.

No one heard their final cry,

No one mourned their plaintive sigh.

Slowly they died and crumbled away,

Mixed with sand and turned to clay.

The loftiest spires ever known

Became an endless sea of loam.

Great rivers of clay and sand

Filled the swamps and formed the land

As far as the eye might see,

Pushing back the ancient sea

Forming a vast, featureless terrain

From sky edge to edge, a fertile plain.

Creatures man will never know,

Roamed this never ending flow.

For millions of years, they held sway

Then mysteriously went away

When the sun disappeared in the dust,

Their bones now part of a fallow crust.

Waiting for the night to end

And the sun to shine again.