limestone

“rock creates the only human landscape”
                                              W. H. Auden

memories of fish
swim through the darkness
of an ancient coral mountain
above
fluorescence
from horizon to a forgotten shore
we shrink
to an imagined significance
a point between a grounded history
and an infinite curve of time
a choreographed immigration
                          of rock and earth
a beauty that no ideology
                          can prevent

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Mark Roberts is a Sydney based writer and critic. He is the founding editor of Rochford Street Review and his latest collection of poetry, Concrete Flamingos, was published by Island Press in 2016.