Erase from your thoughts molten lava and chalk,

The crusting and cooling and cracking.

Step back a while before Hutton and Lyell,

Let tall tales supply what is lacking.

Because we like legends and love to pretend,

A causeway the ancients proposed,

Built by a giant named Finn who was trying

To bloody another one’s nose (MacCool story, bros)!

I wonder what fables we’d forge were we able,

What words would we wrap round these columns?

Some might see hex keys from mythic Ikeas,

From atavist Billys and Malms.

Or petrified combs built by soldiers and drones,

A honey trove hugging the sea.

Badger-sized bees bumbling by on the breeze,

The six-sided cells filled with mead.

The stories are fun but when all’s said and done,

They’re more about us than the Earth.

Nature creates not just pillars and plates,

But souls that crave answers from birth.

[Photo taken at the Giant’s Causeway in Norther Ireland, June 2019]