Lunar Maria

A rising moon

meets the basalt hill

at the slope of earth's memory.

The inception of the Rio Grande Rift in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado was accompanied by voluminous mafic volcanism preserved in part as erosional remnants on an intrarift horst within the current axial rift graben of the San Luis Valley.

Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 96, no. B8: "Oligocene Basaltic Volcanism of the Northern Rio Grande Rift: San Luis Hills Colorado"; R.A. Thompson, C.M. Johnson and H.H. Mehnert; 1991.

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The basalt hills behind our house are ancient shapes, the soft aftermath of ancient volcanic activity. In the evening the hills seem to embody the earth's memory, gently sloping into darkness.

Basalt is an igneous rock, porous yet dense, the color of charcoal. The lunar maria are the basalt plains of the moon. Once believed to be seas, the mare basalts are actually vast, dark plains created by volcanic explosions.