Marine Whether

Carolyn Liu

I’ve been learning in geology recently and
Did you know that limestone can be biochemical?
Did you know that biochemical limestone is made of foraminifera,
Which sounds a little like for-a-mini-pharaoh,
So maybe biochemical limestone is a forum of tributes for some tiny
Tiny Son wedged in the eye of a needle?
According to Omar, a forum of forams is trillions of plankton—
An evolutionary quirk
Building calcite cradles and coffins,
Which then afterward drift down to the ocean floor.
Layers and layers of time.
I wish I could say something like
“And they drifted like snow through the refracted sunbeams muffled,”
Which is possibly pretentious,
But it seems very lonely somehow without
Acknowledging that there was someone watching the post-mortem rain,
Even if that someone was just a flounder.
But actually, it’s quite dark the closer you get to the ocean floor,
And flounders are the ones eating plankton anyway.