A Visualization of Time

I'm reading Rose by Martin Cruz Smith (just so you know, it's not a kids' book) and one passage reminded me of what I did with a bit of N.D. Wilson's Dandelion Fire: I had the urge to turn it into a poem.

So here it is--

Blair loved maps
from Rose by Martin Cruz Smith

He loved topography,
the twists and folds of the earth,
the shelves that became mountains,
the mountains that were islands.

He loved the inconstancy of the planet--
shores that washed away,
volcanoes that erupted from flat plains,
rivers that looped first this way,
then that.

A map was,
admittedly,
no more than a moment in that flux,
but as a visualization of time,
it was a work of art.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rose won the Hammett Prize in 1996.