Who was there when Pangaea split? Who saw borders break, and continents drift When shifting rock and heaves of time? Cleft plates apart, pushed ice to brine The trade winds and the westerlies The push and pull of the gyre The glass eel chasing estuaries To fjord and fen, the mud and mire And as the leaves are doomed to bruise And the fruit is bound for falling We are all compelled to move Our busy skies and racing ocean Our strange and heady motion Who saw the muddy eddies and the sediment And the weathered cliffs forging monuments To the labyrinths that the rivers filled? The days disrupt and the nights distill The trade winds and the westerlies The push and pull of the gyre The glass eel chasing estuaries To fjord and fen, the mud and mire And as the leaves are doomed to bruise And the fruit is bound for falling We are all compelled to move Our busy skies and racing ocean Our strange and heady motion We are all compelled to move, side by side While roaming cliff and waning moon keep time For the tiny travelers on ocean currents Or the desperate flight from the east The steady shifting of populations Or the yearly forfeit of the trees We are all compelled to move, side by side While roaming cliff and waning moon keep time Yet here we are in our vice and vanity Mindless of the irony That while patient science adds fact to fact Hasty man draws lines on maps