Tag: Geology

Posted on

The Sands of Time by Mariya Gusev

mountains and valleys
slip through a child’s fingers
evening in the dunes

by Mariya Gusev

This haiku came about while I was watching my son’s enraptured sand play in the dunes of a Delaware beach on an August evening. I was just explaining to him the origins of sand earlier that day, and the greater rock cycle.

Further reading:

‘Natural History of a Grain of Sand’, 2021, Selby, W., Rediscovering the Golden State, available: https://rediscoveringthegoldenstate.com/natural-history-of-a-grain-of-sand/  

‘Sand: Hold a Mountain in Your Hand’, 2011, Kirby-Hathaway, T., KQED, available: https://www.kqed.org/quest/28651/sand-hold-a-mountain-in-your-hand  

Author bio:

Mariya Gusev co-edits Haiku Pause, a formal haiku newsletter on Substack. Her work has recently appeared in publications including LEAF, The Heron’s Nest, The Mainichi, Failed Haiku, Trash Panda, Asahi Haikuist Network, Haiku Girl Summer, the Kyoto Haiku Project, and the Akita International Haiku Network, and has won awards and mentions in the Tricycle Magazine haiku challenge, the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Haiku invitational, the Kiyoshi and Kyoko Tokutomi Memorial Haiku Contest 2024, and the Wales Haiku Journal Summer Contest 2025.

Read more sciku by Mariya: ‘eons’ and ‘the lion’s gate’.

Posted on

Lily Delivered by James Penha

when my dog vomits
he’ll eat the barf but not so
one primeval fish

by James Penha

An amateur fossil-hunter in Denmark found vomit, embedded in chalk, composed of undigestible sea-lilies likely thrown up by a fish some 66 million years ago.

Further reading:

‘‘An unusual find’: 66m-year-old animal vomit discovered in Denmark’, 2025, France-Presse, A., The Guardian, available: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jan/28/an-unusual-find-66m-year-old-animal-vomit-discovered-in-denmark

Author bio:

Expat New Yorker James Penha (he/him ?) has lived for the past three decades in Indonesia. Nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry, his work is widely published in journals and anthologies. His newest chapbook of poems, American Daguerreotypes, is available for Kindle. Penha edits TheNewVerse.News, an online journal of current-events poetry. You can find out more about James’ poetry on his website https://jamespenha.com and catch up with him on BlueSky @jamespenha.bsky.social

Read more of James’ sciku here.

Posted on

Geological Maps by Tom Lagasse

Geological maps
Mountains of information
Of the interior

by Tom Lagasse

Geologic maps are actually four-dimensional data systems, and it is the fourth dimension of time that is crucial to assessing natural hazards and environmental or socio-economic risk. To read a geologic map is to understand not only where materials and structures are located, but also how and when these features formed.

Further reading:

‘What are geologic maps and what are they used for?’, New Mexico Bureau of Geology & Mineral Resources, available: https://geoinfo.nmt.edu/publications/maps/geologic/whatis.html

‘The National Geologic Map Database’, U.S. Geological Survey, available: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/ngmdb/ngmdb_home.html

Author bio:

Tom’s poetry has appeared in The Silver Birch Poetry Series, Freshwater Literary Journal, The Eunoia Review, and in numerous anthologies. He will be one of the Writers in Residence at the Edwin Way Teale House at Trail Wood this summer. He lives in Bristol, Connecticut, USA. You can follow him on X/Twitter at @tomlagasse

See more sciku by Tom: Microplastics.

Posted on

Suspended by Michele Rule

Metal formation
Buried deep inside the moon
Suspended mass

by Michele Rule

When I read about the discovery of a huge metal mass buried deep underground below the surface of the moon, I immediately jumped to the idea of a spaceship crash site. But reading more I learned about several possible causes, one being an asteroid crash and the other related to the magma solidification of the Moon’s surface. Both involved the suspension of a metal “structure” in a large mass, five times the size of the big island of Hawai’i.

Further reading:

‘Astronomers Discover ‘Deep Structure’ Under Moon’s Largest Crater’, Futurism: https://futurism.com/the-byte/deep-structure-mass-moon-crater

‘Deep Structure of the Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin’, Geophysical Research Letters: https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL082252

Author bio:

Michele Rule lives in Kelowna BC where she writes poems and stories with two dogs, two cats and a supportive partner. Her first book is “Around the World in 15 Haiku”. You can find more of her writing via Linktree and on Twitter @michelerule.

Posted on

Glacier Mice by Dr. Jon Hare

unexplained movements
of a moss ball herd
island bioglaciology

By Jon Hare

My brother sent me an NPR story about a herd of fuzzy green “glacier mice”. The concept is crazy – small rocks, covered in moss, on a glacier, moving in tandem like a herd of miniature muskox. Hotaling et al. (2020) studied moss balls on an Alaskan glacier. They tagged the balls and tracked them for 54 days to understand their movement and then revisited the site over the next three years to understand persistence.

Photo credit – Tim Bartholomaus (http://tbartholomaus.org)

The moss balls moved in unison at approximately 2 cm day-1. Speed of movement was related to rate of ablation of the glacier surface: more ice melting, greater speed of movement. The direction of movement, however, was not related to ablation, nor slope, wind direction, or direction of solar radiation. Further, the moss balls persisted over years with an annual survival rate of 0.86, which equates to a greater than 6 year life span. It is hard to imagine a herd of moss balls surviving six Alaskan winters to move around together in subsequent summers.

These moss balls are also hotspots of biological diversity – they provide an island-like habitat for an array of organisms. How the biodiversity survives the winter is also unknown, as are the rates of colonization and extinction on the moss balls – raising questions of island biogeography on a glacier.

Original research: Hotaling, S, T. C. Bartholomaus and S. L. Gilbert (2020). Rolling stones gather moss: movement and longevity of moss balls on an Alaskan glacier. Polar Biology. https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs00300-020-02675-6

Dr. Jon Hare is a scientist who works in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. His research background is fisheries oceanography and climate change impacts on marine fisheries. Check out Jon’s other sciku ‘Owls of the Eastern Ice’, ‘Varves’, ‘Signs of Spring’ and ‘Cobwebs to Foodwebs’.

Posted on

Ancient Crayon

Ancient crayon of

Mesolithic origin.

What might you have drawn?

 

It can be easy to attribute modern interpretations to objects found in ancient archaeological sites. Objects found in North Yorkshire, UK, were tested by Needham et al (2018) using microscopy and spectroscopy and were revealed to contain ochre – an important mineral pigment used by prehistoric hunter-gathers across the world.

One piece in particular was shaped a little like a modern crayon, a long cylindrical object with a pointed end, four edges and elongate grooves running in parallel down its the length. Both the wear and the shape of the item are not consistent with the natural crystal habits of haematite, suggesting the shape is a result of anthropogenic working and could have been a drawing tool.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.12.002