Escarpment

A sonnet.

Imagine (can you?) a snake’s long backbone

Curved south to north, drawing the mind and heart

Along its length. Vertebrae of limestone

Ridged, pocked, shaped by nature’s art

And time hold the eye above town and field

And to the north, water. Diving here, bane

Of ships (feel the fear) where rocks like fangs wield

Death to those that sail too close. Next, a chain

Of islands rise, recede, bearing westward;

Stone (who could hinder?) crosses a frontier

Unchallenged; older than human guard

Or map. Enduring, as day becomes year;

Year turns to decade: on, past century,

Past millennium, beyond memory.

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The Niagara Escarpment, stretching more than 1000 kilometers from northern New York to Wisconsin via Ontario, is a long scarp of dolomite limestone atop softer shale formedin the Silurian period (about 443.8 to 419.2 million years ago). A UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, the oldest trees in eastern North America grow here. The writing group I coach was given a photo of the cliffs and water where the escarpment borders Georgian Bay (the large bay to the east of Lake Huron in the map below) as the prompt for the week of May 3rd. This sonnet was my contribution.

Map of the Niagara Escarpment: licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

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