Land-slide

Cliff grips into surface,
erosion corrodes the skyline,
hollows out and naturally carves,
consumes, slackens, and weakens foundations.

Stone slips onto stone, layer upon aged layer
presses, insisting change, enforcing alteration,
down, as so many men hauling a rock forward
with rope and gusto, rock rolls inexorably on.

And now, limply hangs the cliff edge,
which crumbles into the sea, cracked
from the original lofted folds, mother earth
leans in, rearranging her form.

Claustrophobic stones, hemmed in together, are
pressed back to the ocean floor, solid atoms
to be compressed by time, whose waves
smother after collapse, after avalanche,
atoms stressed together, violently smacked,
to be gently caressed into shape once again.