Richard Fortey monostichs

[Continuing our series on scientists who write like angels]

Earthquakes are the shudders

of the reluctant crust

as plates plunge

                  under

              one another

~

the sun cracked the mud   into  crispy polygons

~

where frost prised slabs of rock away,  and rain carried off  its stony booty

[Source: Life, 1998]

~     ~     ~

And, from his fellow geology-maven  John McPhee:

Near the far side of Utah,

the flats turned blinding white,    corn-snow white;

revolving winds were making devils out of salt.

Over the whiteness, you could see the salt go off the curve of the earth.

[Source:  Annals of the Former World (1998), p. 60]