The Pattern Of A Dakini's Skirt Poem by Denis Mair

In the pit of my stomach I feel a mountain range looming ahead,

like a dakini flaring her skirt, reminding me of the givingness of that upland region.

That rugged terrain so inconvenient to traverse is brocaded with micoclimates:

It's a multi-compartmented gene bank for the ancestors of our food crops;

They still use it as a reservoir for their pool of wild alleles.

What is more, those upthrusting ranges continuously bring trace elements from the earth's crust.

A man named Michael Denton probably fell into a daze from gazing at that dakini's brocade.

He did some rough calculations---(for a scientist this counts as a flight of fancy) :

the rate at which bioessential trace minerals are leached and depleted from lowland soils

is close to their replenishment by crustal upheaval,

by which trace substances are made available to surface ecosystems.

So there, all you jaded flatlanders! You've allowed the pit of your stomach to be dulled!