{"id":24,"date":"2017-08-15T09:07:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-15T09:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/circlejourney.net\/writing\/blog\/?p=24"},"modified":"2026-04-21T16:24:35","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T06:24:35","slug":"drift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/circlejourney.net\/writing\/blog\/2017\/08\/15\/drift\/","title":{"rendered":"Drift"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/fulminare.files.wordpress.com\/2017\/08\/sea.png\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>We once thought we could fathom the vastness of the sea<br>from the lap of an island shore. Watching ships tilt<br>across the horizon, we laughed, knowing nothing<br>could survive\u00a0the fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We did not see how, deep beyond the continental margins, submarine<br>canyons channeled secret rivers onto underwater plains, or how<br>the abyssal fish slowly went blind, their unseen lights<br>speckling the cavernous dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In our sleep we hear<br>the seabed groan with the weight of all her shipwrecks,<br>lift her hem, and settle into a hot embrace<br>around the mantle, the sulfide pools simmering through cracks<br>where she presses close to the magma light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here I chance upon the sparkling clasp of a coral reef necklace<br>tracing a line from one atoll to the next.<br>Following it I leapfrog dashed borders, beginning<br>to contrive an idea of you<br>from the contours of these countless coasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The geological record says we are five centimetres closer<br>every year. In geologic time\u2014perhaps,<br>if you were a reef and I, an archipelago\u2014we\u2019d meet<br>at a faultline in the next eon and crumble together, leaving<br>a new continent where we were before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today, we stand knee deep in the shoals, losing ships<br>to the horizon between us. Salt sifts<br>between our toes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When you laugh, it almost feels<br>like those ten million years have already passed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We once thought we could fathom the vastness of the seafrom the lap of an island shore. Watching ships tiltacross the horizon, we laughed, knowing nothingcould survive\u00a0the fall. We did not see how, deep beyond the continental margins, submarinecanyons channeled secret rivers onto underwater plains, or howthe abyssal fish slowly went blind, their unseen lightsspeckling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-no-separators","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/circlejourney.net\/writing\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/circlejourney.net\/writing\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/circlejourney.net\/writing\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circlejourney.net\/writing\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circlejourney.net\/writing\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/circlejourney.net\/writing\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":546,"href":"https:\/\/circlejourney.net\/writing\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/circlejourney.net\/writing\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circlejourney.net\/writing\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circlejourney.net\/writing\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}