We describe to the kids how tremendous
ice sheets rose as high as a tsunami
and pummeled mountains into the debris
of a thousand rocks. Then, someone corrects us.
The hammer of a glacier wasn’t the source
of this destruction. The bedrock was split
by water freezing inside the granite,
so more like rot than any outside force.
The kids take in these facts without concern,
though we now argue over what they heard
and whether science should have the last word.
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That what seems solid might be rent apart,
not by blows, but by failure at its heart
isn’t the truth that we’d wanted them to learn.
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