Continental Drift

“Australia is in the process of colliding with Southeast Asia—” // I learn this froma podcast about marine botany on a new-moon eve. // At water's edge, slight chaoses flicker upfrom eelgrass. Least terns silver-flashing in deep violet, wings alight. // Something rends the almost-night. Something heals it dark again. Something like flotsam: unwieldy, almost alive. “So what is a continent?” “For geologists, continents are not that usefula concept; we talk more of tectonic plates or cratons—” // To learn plants of the Eocene, studyrock. Trace water's migration by reading its remains. // Read in fragile concave: afterlife ofleaves. Read in tern's unruliness: quiver of past strife. We disperse like flotsam and pray to arrive. What puzzle piece of earth could lock into our bay—what sistershore? // After war, my mother resettles in America, her brother in Australia. InVietnam, their sister waits. // Decades pass. // When I meet my Aussie cousins, their accentdelights me, their petal cheeks. “Your seasons are backwards!” we tease. // Triangulation of thewomb: kinship a veil drawn thin, pearlescent, across three continents. We swim with flotsam and, at least, survive. One day, not soon, this fractured land mass will remakeitself. // Tonight, I gather deadwood: driftwood from other shores, detritus from ours. // I ask glow and warmth of all that washes up. // I will it to ignite.