Years Ago, At This Very Spot

I sit at the bottom of a shallow sea.
Above the surface, the old mountains are all wavy,
leaning down. They are stooped and as patient
as the deserts of wizened lizards they will become.
The new one, the one I will drive over to work
the one on which I will see the maple’s early change
the one on which I will see the brown bear’s lazy gaze
the one on which I will stand  with my aging father
has still not taken its first tectonic steps.
It’s not even the apple in extruding lava’s eye,
yet by the time I am old enough
to put on these eyeglasses
it will already be ten-times diminished
from its highest peak.  I miss this part as

A big thing blocks out the yellow white sun above me
and swallows an ancestor or two.
When it is gone only the Star River shows the flow.