Snow Falling Through Fog
This is how we used to imagine the ocean floor: a steady snow of dead diatoms and forams drifting higher in the sunken plains, a soggy dust on the climbing underwater peaks.
But such a weather would build a parched earth, a ball of salt.
Down the last mountains above sea level real snow would sift until it met the rising tide of salt and the earth was perfect, done.
Now we think of the ocean floor as several floors, vast plates grinding against each other as metaphors grind each other.
We say "plates" as if somewhere the earth were flat, or we were faithful to the way our round eyes flatten the round earth whenever the lack of a compelling metaphor gives us a chance.
The basins would never fill up even with our bad ideas.
Information keeps our senses linked.
The fog thins and we can see more of the air the snow defines, the snow like a syllabus of starfish.
William Matthews
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