My Shaky Isles

My love, my love these shaky Isles

Abandoned in the vast blue seas,

Born in Mesozoic times

When sedimentary oozes ease

From far Antarctic mountainsides

To windblown dust from Austral plain

They lay in layers thick and deep

Beneath the Tasman Sea's domain.

A thousand million years of thrust

Of plate tectonic shear and drift,

Mid oceanic larva seep

Determines continental shift.

Deep magmatic plumes arise

From down within the planet's core

To burst asunder from the crust

As mountain God's volcanic lore.

Ash and larva from the vent

In pyroclastic fierce display,

Obliterate the cold blue sky

Explosively in massive way.

Rooster tails of fiery ash

And bread crust bombs cascade about

Vulcan roars his rage to all

In violent, vast, volcanic route.

Ignimbrite flows from the vent

In sheets a hundred meters deep

The incandescence, from on high,

Would, watching Angels, cause to weep.

Like quicksilver, it cloaks the land

To cover all in burning flow,

To last a million years as sheets

Of sharded rock where 'ere you go.

So the land was born of fire

And bent and twisted by the force

Of upthrust from the great, beneath

And earthquakes felt throughout, of course.

Earthquakes of unearthly fear

Wrack foundation's very base,

Sudden as the artic gale

Unpredictable to face.

So the shaky Isles were born

Here to lie in ocean's vast,

Clad in forest lush and green

Snowclad mountains, rivers fast.

Well kept cities, well kept towns

Population proud and clean,

Beauty all around is felt

Perched atop creation's dream.

So the Shaky Isles exist

Perfect in their place in time,

Perched atop subducting plates

Perched in ignorance sublime.

What's around the corner now?

Who's concerned, who really cares

For Kiwis make the best of now...

The rest remains as chance declares.

Marshalg

Celebrating a love affair with my beautiful New Zealand.

31 August 2012