Ten thousand years ago great glaciers melted.
Two thousand thousand years of grinding.
Bare bones of mountains,
mammoth and giant elk,
testament to an age of ice.

Sixty million years ago, a wave of broken flint
ripped all asunder.
Cave Hill fissures spewed molten rock.
Blackened, a steaming moonscape
cut by rivers glowing.

Four hundred and fifty million years ago,
Ireland was spilt.
From Dundalk to Ballybunion by an ocean.
Iapetus, now swallowed,
tears remain, source of the Lagan.

by Mark Cooper