“Submerged yet Unfragmented” by Rebecca Beardsall

Seventh largest geological continent
youngest, thinnest and most
(94%) submerged.

First proposed by name
in 1995 – just now
exposed into mainstream.

Framework of layers – continental
and oceanic – traced
on the face of the earth.

Thermal relaxation, isostatic
balance of thinned crust –
led to submergence.
Our hidden continent:

Zealandia.

Offshore ridges, plateaus
– fragments and slivers
physically separate from Australia.

Middle Cambrian limestones
oldest known rocks rest
in the Takaka Terrane –

New Zealand’s basement.

Does this revelation
change anything? Change us?
Did the Maori know this

when they told of Maui
fishing up the North Island
of Aotearoa? Did they
know all along of the

submerged land
waiting to be hooked
and pulled out of the deep?

Rebecca Beardsall works at Western Washington University. She received her MA in English from Lehigh University and her MFA from Western Washington University. She has more than twenty years’ experience in freelance writing in the United States and abroad. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Origyns, SWIMM, West Texas Review, Two Cities Review, The Schuylkill Valley Journal, Amaranth, Common Ground Review, Poetry NZ, and Rag Queen Periodical. She wrote and co-edited three books, including Philadelphia Reflections: Stories from the Delaware to the Schuylkill. Find her at: rebeccabeardsall.com