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      May 21, 2023Amy MillerOn Seeing My Home Move Backward Through Geological Time

      Of course I picture the actual house, my little peaked roof
      riding the plate southward back through Neocene, Cretaceous,
       
      beachfront, then sub-marine, and passing through the dinosaurs
      so fast—they were only our granddads, but there before
       
      the flowers began. So long—but what is long, when before them
      everything felt the world die off, a 76 percent extinction,
       
      and that’s not even the big one before that, when almost
      all of the plants died. What I thought would be wonder
       
      instead has me thinking about lab tests
      and art and sitting with friends and laughing and the speck-
       
      ness of us all, and the fathoms of space. And us,
      just wisps, white forms on an x-ray, nature riffing out another sub-
       
      species, us with wild impractical hair and voices
      that sing at the kitchen window while we’re doing the dishes.
       
      And although my neighbors have a new sound system
      and The Lord of the Rings on endless replay, I feel
       
      forgiving toward them tonight, with their magic
      and sleepy brotherhood. I mean, it’s all extinction
       
      eventually, and look at us, we made movies about
      dinosaurs, and a boy walking by the water found the tooth
       
      of a mammoth just last month—that recent in the blink
      of life in the vast dry eye of the planet. It’s possible
       
      to think more than one thing at once—that’s
      evolution for you—and fear of leaving this life
       
      rides right along with a oneness with the megalodons
      and the algae. And the die-offs—I can hardly say
       
      the word—we have all fallen, cancered, arterially
      seized so many many times, entire oceans
       
      of loss and leaving. Tonight four pillows
      on the couch lie together like a pile of sleeping
       
      cats. The prayer plant closes its long hands.
      The Christmas lights will have to come down
       
      from the doorway, dark bulbs from another
      season, while the house moves swiftly through the year.

      from Poets Respond

      Amy Miller

      “An interactive map that shows you where your town was in relation to landmasses and oceans millions of years ago has been making the rounds of social media this week. What begins as a fun diversion—‘My house was beachfront property in the Late Cretaceous!’—becomes an existential rabbit hole when you start reading the descriptions (lower left corner) of what was happening on the planet at that time. At many times, what was happening were mass extinctions. Pondering the massive die-offs and how many millions of years it took for life to rebound each time, and how often that has happened—it’s a staggering, sobering perspective. I probably learned this all in school, but I was young and it didn’t stick. It’s sticking now.”