Primitive cells’ dividing daughters:
One, now two, sundered in water.
But then there is the coitus of stones
Crystallizing and all alone
Outside of time’s organic morass.
Rocks ride the years. No decay will pass
Across their cool and splintered faces
While the seasons eat up carbon’s traces.
Are stones so different from ancient trees?
They contract and split when their fibers freeze
And rainfall swells underneath their skin
But they’ll never be biology’s kin.
Their sex takes place in quartz and geodes
That spark with light on trodden roads.
They bear our fossils on silicon beds—
The foster mothers of forgotten dead.

Elizabeth Hurst

If you have any thoughts about this poem,  Elizabeth Hurst  would like to hear them