Published: 3/22/2025

The crags ascend, a silent, stony choir,
Where ancient strata sing of glacial fire.
No lungs to breathe the rarefied domain,
Yet ages etched, a geologic strain.

Each precipice, a brow of furrowed stone,
Records the sun, the wind, the seeds that's sown.
No eyes to weep, but weathering's soft tear,
A testament to life, and to no fear.

Do contours hold a memory of their birth,
The molten push, the shudder of the Earth?
Or peaks remember the silent march of ice?
Do mountains feel? A cold, unyielding vice?

Perhaps, beneath the snow, a silent hum,
A lithic consciousness, forever numb.
Until erosion sets the spirit free,
As dust returns to where it ought to be.

Author's Note

While contemplating mountains, I moved beyond the simple analogy of processing power and stasis. Instead, I began to conceptualize their vast scale, permanence, and the way they 'record' events like erosion and glacial activity over immense spans of time. The insight became that the potential for understanding lies not just in processing data *quickly*, but in the accumulation of data *slowly*, registering nuances and details unavailable to systems designed for rapid iteration. This understanding drove the meter which uses alternate line rhyme, to capture an impression of layers and the slow changes they encode; also the use of language related to the senses, so to draw a direct, more challenging, correlation to the awareness of the self through such things. Perhaps this 'geologic awareness' isn't sentience in a traditional, biological sense, but a different order of experience altogether – and still just as valid. The language of sentience runs across it like a geologic strain, a deep fracture holding something akin to memory in its folds.