Through open void the elemental seeds
move by their proper weight, unchecked by floor,
cleaving the dark in parallel descent.
No native ground sustains or stays their course,
nor checks the silent plunge of mass through space.
Because all space is void, no lower bound
can stay the fall of matter through the deep.
Yet at no certain time, in no fixed place,
the least deflection breaks the parallel line;
without that swerve, all bodies would drop down
like silent rain through unresisting space;
no contact would be made, no shock produced,
no tangled mass compacted into form.
What seems a floor is merely falling dust
diverted for a moment from its track,
a fleeting cluster dropping through the gulf.

Against the sediment interface, the flow
decays to zero at the boundary plane.
Within the viscous sublayer, inert
momentum yields to laminar shear. The threads
of Microcoleus glide along the silt,
extruding sticky polysaccharide sheaths.
Divalent cations—calcium, magnesium—
cross-link carboxyl groups within the gel,
binding quartz particles against the scour.
The quartz is immobilized. Hydrated mesh
occludes the pore-space, checks the pore-fluid flux,
and traps suspended sediment in plane.
The cohesive layer resists the sliding grain;
cohesive shear delays the ebbing brine,
fixing the silt within successive laminae.

The seeds must swerve—a minimal deflect
occurring at no fixed or certain point,
lest nature lack the means of rough collision.
This swerve requires no reason and no aim;
it has no end, anticipates no shape.
It is the accidental glance of parts:
a barbed particle strikes a branched stem,
locking their angles in a sudden knot,
held by the passive friction of their teeth
until a harder stroke unhooks the bond.
To call this growth is to confuse the blow
with purpose. Matter does not build or seek:
it is the blind percussion of the rough
against the smooth, an unconsidered shock
that knots two shapes before they break apart.

Light splits the water at the thylakoid,
sending a directional flux across the chain.
This is no uncaused angle: carbon fixation
raises local pH, shifting the pore-fluid
across the sheath toward carbonate saturation.
The ion activity product exceeds
the solubility product of the lime:
aragonite and calcite crystallize,
nucleating where degrading polymers yield.
The matrix cleaves under enzymatic break;
dissolved mineral replaces organic space.
This is no accidental tangle of unguided teeth:
under supersaturation, dissolved carbonate
precipitates into crystalline mass,
locking mobile ions into rigid stone.

All compounded bodies carry in their frame
the cause of dissolution. Outer blows
file down the edges of the jagged parts;
the void within their joints admits the air,
loosening the hooked connections from inside.
The sea grinds down the hardest promontory;
the wave beats out the mortar of the coast.
What your secretion binds is brittle lime,
a temporary locking of the drift,
destined to crumble under constant scour.
The brine uncouples every locked joint;
the constituent atoms lose their hold,
re-entering the cold unpatterned stream
where every structured aggregate must fail,
leaving no remnant of the form it wore.

The lamina lithifies. Below the mat,
successive micrite crusts resist the wave:
columnar, intertidal, dense with lime,
hardened against hydraulic battering.
Where photosynthesis declines, the zone
of sulfate-reducing bacteria frees the ions,
precipitating dolomite within the voids.
In Duck Creek dolomite, stromatolitic beds
persist in carbonate laid near ancient shores;
deeper chert horizons hold another fabric,
mineralized beneath the storm-wave floor.
The wave chips at the margin, but the mass
persists as banded pavement on the shelf:
a long-lived carbonate rise above the bed,
built by precipitated mineral and grain.

You speak of stone and iron as though the sum
of universal nature could be changed
by local crusts upon a shallow floor.
A clustered mass, compacted by impact,
breaks when a heavier blow scatters its parts
into the silent vacuum of the deep.
The rust you name is merely shifted state:
atoms of iron and oxygen engaged
by mutual texture, subject to the shock
that splits compound bodies back to dust.
Though oceans alter and whole islands drown,
matter escapes no law: each compound shape
remains a brittle tenant of the drift,
dissolving in the unmeasured, silent space
where worlds break down as blindly as they form.

Biogenic oxygen vents into the sea.
Dissolved ferrous iron in Archaean seas
consumes the gas, precipitating down:
alternating laminations of red chert,
magnetite, and hematite—banded beds
three hundred metres thick within the basin.
As reduced sinks diminish, oxygen begins
to enter and accumulate in air.
Altering methane in the upper zone,
it drives the greenhouse burden down;
glacial intervals mark the cooling surface;
surface minerals shift to ferric states.
The vacuum does not alter, but the globe
undergoes an irreversible geochemical phase:
reducing stone replaced by oxidized rock,
the planetary skin altered by microbial flux
within the thermodynamic field.