THE OXYGEN MAKERS
Stromatolites in Shark Bay, Western Australia
Midday, water’s edge
Don’t take breathing for granted;
it hasn’t always been so easy.
The fresh twenty-one percent we live on
was made by these slimy cyan domes
over billions of silent years, puff by puff.
Somewhere we’ve failed, made it all go wrong;
but these patient workers could do it all again.
Late afternoon, ankle deep
I throw my phone in the warm shallow water;
I could never tell you what it is I see.
I throw in my watch; counting seconds is pointless
where nothing has changed since before there were fish.
I throw in my keys; the iron they are made of
was oxidised by these round turbines
while the air was still rank from creation.
I throw in my sunglasses; without these domes
there never would have been an ozone layer.
Early evening, knee deep
I’m not afraid to go further out
into the maternal warmth of the water
that wraps my legs like a birth blanket;
the plesiosaurs stay far away
from these extra salty shallows.
A pterodactyl kite shadow flits
across my shoulder, flying on
to better hunting. I breathe deep;
the air is richer than you’ll ever know,
our twenty-one percent tastes more like thirty
in the dense Cretaceous heat.
Sunset, floating face down
I am as old and as young as the domes;
there is still so much to do to change the world.
My back soaks up the late Pre-Cambrian sun
just as they do but there is so little life
in the air, so little; all we need is time.
Published in Beir Bua
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S.C. Flynn 