Start with a base map, unlabeled terrain,
in shaded green and ochre, nude relief,
cool continental mass bathing in blue,
a face whose features now are visible,
unannotated, apolitical,
as if a mighty snow had settled here
and muffled every static line and letter,
earth as naked as the moon, but full
of lively color, from the fissured west
into the placid belly of the country,
eastward over quartzite ridge, carbonate
valley into southwest-trending s-curves
up the coast, a range two thousand miles,
two hundred fifty million years of mountain
formed in three successive waves of rock
uplifted and depressed, and in the west
it’s just begun. Nine hundred million acres
under time, under stress and stretches
of content. Reserved for a duration.
Blue-green grid of constant revolution.
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