The Geologist delighted in finding quarries.
Tears and slices of landscape;
fine sections of tuffs and lavas,

The jagged crags of resistant rock.
The impressive ridge of the Stiperstones.

Old rocks, like the marbles and schists
In the drowned fault valley
of the Dardanelles –
The Hellespont, swum
by the lovelorn Leander
until he drowned. Gallipoli,
where 130,000 soldiers died.

The geologist’s wife was left behind,
displaced in wooded limestone scarps.
The Silurian district of Ledbury, valleys
cut in the soft shales, sheltering.