Glass Eel

Who was there when Pangaea split?
Who saw borders break, and continents drift
When shifting rock and heaves of time?
Cleft plates apart, pushed ice to brine

The trade winds and the westerlies
The push and pull of the gyre
The glass eel chasing estuaries
To fjord and fen, the mud and mire

And as the leaves are doomed to bruise
And the fruit is bound for falling
We are all compelled to move
Our busy skies and racing ocean
Our strange and heady motion

Who saw the muddy eddies and the sediment
And the weathered cliffs forging monuments
To the labyrinths that the rivers filled?
The days disrupt and the nights distill

The trade winds and the westerlies
The push and pull of the gyre
The glass eel chasing estuaries
To fjord and fen, the mud and mire

And as the leaves are doomed to bruise
And the fruit is bound for falling
We are all compelled to move
Our busy skies and racing ocean
Our strange and heady motion

We are all compelled to move, side by side
While roaming cliff and waning moon keep time
For the tiny travelers on ocean currents
Or the desperate flight from the east
The steady shifting of populations
Or the yearly forfeit of the trees

We are all compelled to move, side by side
While roaming cliff and waning moon keep time

Yet here we are in our vice and vanity
Mindless of the irony
That while patient science adds fact to fact
Hasty man draws lines on maps