Fossicking Poetry Blog No 165

FOSSICKING

calcite rose

This poem is a small celebration of the wonders of stones and minerals. It refers to some pottering around in a basalt quarry- rocks that are remains of the erosion of a large volcanic area or caldera in the Northern Rivers region of NSW. When the volcano finished it's eruptions about 20 million years ago, it had risen to a height of over 2 kilometres, and layers of lava and ash had been deposited over its outward slopes, to a diameter of about 100 kilometres. http://www.bigvolcano.com.au/natural/wollum.htm

chalcedony

A couple of terms that may be unfamiliar to some-

FOSSICKING- Australia and NZ - searching for gold

or precious stones in abandoned workings, rivers, etc.

To rummage or search for (something)

POTHOLE A hole or pit, especially one in a road surface. 

red jasper

volcanic glass (obsidian)

FOSSICKING

Here's a hole in green hill's flow:

Bare, official gulf in grass,

Where they've blown up earth and dug;

Crushing rocks to heaps of rubble,

Dusty piles of small, grey stones-

Spread as gravel to resurface

Long and pot-holed, country roads.

Here's a patch for plundering,

Searching Vulcan's ancient store,

Fossicking for fragments forged

In the far past fires of the earth,

In his long-since vanished furnace.

Just for pleasure in the seeking,

Peering all around the place,

We go searching for earth beauty,

Buried far from sight and light.

Just for seeking as a pleasure,

We go smashing bits from boulders

In the massive mounds of tumbled rocks,

Finding what deposited and formed

In the fissures of the basalt.

And hidden, they are here:

Bright tiny treasurings-

A calcite rose: a fadeless flower

With centuries in petals; a great

Smooth egg of dark volcanic glass,

So hard and sheer, so sharp if shattered.

And scattered here and there, there lie

Red shards of tough, sleek jasper;

Or shimmering, light fragments

Of bubbled, waxy-white chalcedony;

Or best, a hollow of clear calcite crystal,

Once buried far from light, in stony starkness,

Now finding day to glitter with its shining peaks-

As if some distant star-gleam leaked

The forms of pure light into the solid darkness.

calcite crystals