Elements Of Antiquity Poem by Robert Charles Howard

1. Earth (Pangaea)

Pangaea heaved and shifted
beneath the fire-storm sky.
Colliding plates and spewing mountains
shook, roared and thundered
under the brutal chaos
of torrential cataclysms.

In time she yielded her ire
to millennia of pacific rains -
her severed crust
set adrift across the oceans
like gigantic earthen rafts.

Jungles sprang up and terrible lizards
came, grazed and left their bones.
Forests, grains and multifarious beasts
grew and perished in accord
with their past and future destinies.

So here we are - earthbound,
tossed from our mothers' wombs -
fated to live and breed
by the grace of miracles
far beyond our ken.

Beloved mother Gaia,
from whose dust we are raised,
nurture and sustain us
and sing us to our mortal sleep.

2. Air

Air - earth's miracle brew of
oxygen, nitrogen and all the rest
meted out in perfect harmony.

Air - silent and still on a moonlit night -
driver of sheeted rain on window panes -
and winds that shake the trembling aspens.

Air - author of land and ocean squalls -
bringer of that ominous pallor
that presages a tornado's furor

Air - invisible aerial highway
for majestic eagles and turbo-jets -
medium of rhetoric and symphonies.

Air - window to the cosmos
and our fragile life-giving broth -
unwitting conveyer of toxic alchemy.

Keep watch my sisters and brothers:
the air we breathe is what we make it
or rather what we let it be.

3. Water

Water like a capricious deity
wanders through time and topography -
cherished and cursed for
what it gives and what it takes away.

Gentle rains and strident gales
sculpt rivers and streams
through forests and plains
bound for union with the open sea.

Diurnal tides ebb and wane
at the whim of the charismatic moon.
Ice mountains advance and retreat
leaving rock-strewns moraines in their wake.

Turbulent currents
plummeting over cataracts,
spray pastel prisms
across the misted valleys.

Beneath our all too fragile skins,
secret sanguine rivers navigate
our veins and arteries
bathing organs, limbs and sensors
with curative balm and sustenance.

Wellspring of all elements,
fill our daily ladles
and grant us the will and empathy
to bequeath the same to our progeny.

4. Fire

Two hundred million years ago
our Paleolithic cousins
seized branches from a burning forest
and stepped into a bold new world.

By the glow of fire-lit caves,
and the scent of searing venison,
they gathered wits and tools
to craft shelters and weaponry.

Their children's children would design
forges and furnaces, factories
and build engines that run on fire.

But their anxious siblings in despair
snatched lightning from the sky
and twisted by fits of anger pride
made also muskets, missiles, bombs
and nuclear Armageddons.

Loki, god of nobler flames
open our blood-stained eyes
and show us the means
to stay our arson lust and
abide by the light of reason.

Revised and integrated version, December,2015