Shatter Cone

So quiet now, durable
Pattern in the sheer cliff face
At the surface of the lake,

All of it as it is not.
Let’s get the geology
Squared away: meteorite

Impact made this point fracture,
A point and a radiant
Break, not too unlike the stars

A rock or a bullet makes
In a shatter-proof windshield.
On a world without water,

Or weather, or tectonics,
Or lichen, it would stand clear.
On a gas world, disappear.

Here, it sports a black spruce trunk
Its triangle tents above
The lake that was a glacier,

After it had been a lake,
After being a glacier,
And so on and on, backwards.

It’s not a scar. It’s a shape
Similar to scars you have
And made. Here was where the sky,

Or a bit, intersected
All that is not, that as is
You think of as your planet.