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Deep Time
“in reality, the intervals of geological time are too long to be readily comprehensible to minds used to thinking in terms of days, weeks, and years…”
-In Search of Deep Time by Henry Gee
deep time is fossil time
the slow petrification of bone
as once-living flesh rots
and is lost
deep time is mountain time
jagged peaks born out of the earth
hills eroding gently into old age
deep time is Hawai’i time
underwater volcanoes reaching
up to break the surface
like breaching whales
deep time isn’t redwood time
tree rings are not deep time minutes
or even months
deep time is water carving through rock
glaciers scraping through landscapes
dropping boulders behind
deep time is cave time
stalactite meeting stalagmite
pillars of the earth
deep time can’t be fathomed
deep time is when you ask the Earth
how old she is
and she says
you couldn’t even imagine
Vacation Photo
We pose in front of the elephants.
I must have been ten.
There’s Dad, smiling broadly,
though his eyes slide to the side,
self-conscious.
He’s wearing his usual
plaid button-up
tucked into a pair
of pleated jeans.
He carries the camera bag,
lost the coin toss with my mom.
His arm is around Mom’s waist.
Her hair is cropped off
in a styleless boy cut.
She wears a shirt
with a gorilla on it that says
Don’t mess with me.
She’s looking at something
beyond the frame of the photo.
My brother, Paul,
rail-thin and snaggle-toothed,
yanks the tail
of a man in a lion costume.
He glares at my dad.
They had been arguing.
Paul wears his hat backwards,
like I do, except mine is neon orange,
crushing permed hair
that looks like my fifth-grade teacher’s.
I’m shrugging out from under
Mom’s arm,
my hands
clenched into fists.
I’m not smiling.
I stopped smiling after
I read that baring your teeth
was a sign of aggression
in wolves.
Drusilla NicGowan has been published in Reed Magazine and have won Honorable Mention in North Carolina State University's Academy of American Poets Award. Before studying poetry, she studied ecology and evolutionary biology.
Email: Drusilla NicGowan
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