Witness By Josette Abruzzini <br /> <br /> I stood witness<br /> to nature's jagged sculptures<br /> and marveled at its rugged clumps.<br /> Born of vicious happenstance,<br /> Cracked and worn by a hostile ocean and an army of eroding agents.<br /> <br /> I stood witness <br /> and stared deep down the cliff into the turbulent surf <br /> of the narrow channel that sloshed between me and <br /> the massive boulder called Bird Island.<br /> And I pondered the creation of what I saw.<br /> <br /> There had been no witness <br /> as a hot, spongy mass of submarine shale<br /> steamed and rippled, slivered and wrangled <br /> 'til the browns and grays along the sinistral faults <br /> cross-bedded and coupled for the ages.<br /> <br /> No witness<br /> as part of it let go,<br /> spanned the ocean, <br /> crossed the equator,<br /> and joined Gondwana. <br /> <br /> No witness<br /> as a solitary wind-bent pine tree,<br /> cracked under an approaching glacier's weighty, hungry edge,<br /> its scrawny trunk lodging<br /> into its captor's gravelly icy underbelly.<br /> <br /> No witness<br /> as the polar visitor spread its torso over all the land<br /> shoved and strained and groaned through the thick fog, <br /> split its mountains apart,<br /> stole its seeds,<br /> and gutted open its submerged reservoirs.<br /> <br /> No witness<br /> as the northern tip of this lonely peninsula<br /> cracked off with such violence that<br /> chunks and shards <br /> littered the lonely cove. <br /> <br /> No witness<br /> as the glacial shadow crept away <br /> and fog and sun returned<br /> to kiss and warm its scratched and mottled face,<br /> after that long heavy winter had left it barren for a millennia.<br /> <br /> A mere 18,000 years since life renewed itself<br /> with trees still bent against the wind,<br /> and a grassy carpet wrapped around its well-traveled rock.<br /> <br /> I stood witness as<br /> seabirds made their nests in rocky crevices <br /> that would always capture snow, rain, and salty spray;<br /> crannies that would always freeze and warm and flux<br /> and crack <br /> again and again, <br /> more and more.<br /> <br /> <br /> I stood witness<br /> to the algae and bacteria of mustard lichen,<br /> shielded and nourished by its fungi affiliate.<br /> A symbiosis that defied arctic chills and squalls and drizzles.<br /> <br /> <br /> I stood witness to the careless gulls, oblivious to their visitors,<br /> And to the yellow, orange and blue beaks of Atlantic Puffin <br /> as they popped in and out of their sheltered nests<br /> and swaggered around their serrated summer home<br /> in formal attire.<br /> <br /> I stood witness <br /> to the cracked-off pieces of a lonely peninsula that had found purpose.<br /> <br /> I stood witness<br /> to the land and its life <br /> on that sunny, breezy June morning.<br /> <br /> I stood witness, <br /> during one day's fleeting sketch. <br />   Submitted By: Josette Kenny Abruzzini