Five Star Brand - 3 Word Wednesday

Thom writes:
Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words.

Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday.

To join this week's 3 Word Wednesday writing group *click here*

This week's words:

Dreadful; Hasty; Sustain

Tectonic movement between west Gondwana (Africa-South America) and east Gondwana (Madagascar, Greater India and Australia) began prior to 150 million years ago. At about this time, about 150 million years ago, rifting along the southern margin of Australia began, the first separating events of Australia from Antarctica. By 140 million years ago the rifts continued to form along the western and southern margins of Australia, separating Australia from Antarctica and Greater India. This separation was accomplished over the span of 20 million years and that part of the separation was complete by 120 million years ago. But Western Australia and Antarctica were still connected.

Much of Australia had subsided enough so that a sea formed above it, but this gradually changed through ten million years starting about 110 million years ago. Once again above water, the whole of Australia, now long separated from the rest of the world, continued its separation from Antarctica. There is much local detail involving the nearby landforms of New Zealand and Tasmania, and the island groups that are now found to the north.

One key conundrum, the major extinction event presumed to be the meteor impact in the Yucatan area of Mexico and Central America as it was then configured, not as it is shaped now, shows no evidence at all in the area of the Australiam continent, 65 million years ago. By 45 million years ago the separation of Australia and Antarctica was complete and the circumpolar flow around Antarctica was in place. For a birds eye view of this *click here*

I have no idea why this connects with my poem, but I find the tectonic movements of our planet fascinating. As I understand it, all the now separated continents will eventually come back together in some far distant future. I suspect just as man had nothing to do with the past movements, he will have nothing to do with the continued continental shifting. Eventually, all this planetary crustal circulation will stop. That will signal the end of life sustaining things on planet earth, since the crustal circulations distribute several critical features that nourish life here. Life in some extreme and limited form may continue then, but we will be gone from the planet. Perhaps we will have gone elsewhere in the cosmos, but we will no longer be here.

Five Star Brand

I have kept my oath
shaped like my trust, carved by you
last dreadful season
and while not hasty
I am sure you ground it out
of a single block,
a single blonde stump
of five star brand. The dishpan
wash will not sustain
us any more. No,
I am not much built for speed
and my word not much
good for our great hope
(it would dissolve into grit)
but we both are good
enough for now, for the worst
that comes of this old
slog.

‎October 9, ‎2013 5:45 AM