After Compression

Laurinda Lind

I am springing up again as in dark and light 
bands from the friction of movement through 
skidding hundreds of miles from a plane of origin. 
Those years left dents in the landscape, fissured, 
while the chill came up the cracks. The glacier 
I kept my whole life, crawling toward a greater cold, 
though I never said I was elastic. Instead I was 
weight ripping out stitch by stitch. Yet now 
I come up light from a cellar that had settled 
into rock erosion. Then searchrays could reach 
into my dark. People by the headland didn’t 
think someone could arrive through so many 
layers in slow rebound invisible to the naked 
eye, but I sent out signals silently since birth.

The Science

Post-glacial rebound occurs when land rises after the retreat of glaciers, which once pressed down on it with tremendous weight. As glaciers moved, they transported massive rocks far from their origin. When the ice melted, the earth's crust began to unwarp. Even after ten thousand years, this uplift continues, demonstrating the elasticity of the earth’s mantle, which moves gradually through mantle convection. This process, driven by heat currents from the planet's core, causes tectonic plates to shift and helps land rise again.

The conceit of the poem likens this geological phenomenon to a person recovering from long-term depression. Just as the land slowly regains its shape after being weighed down, the narrator experiences a gradual emotional rebound. In this context, the poem introduces the term ‘searchrays’, symbolising beams of light used in search-and-rescue operations. These rays penetrate the darkness, metaphorically representing hope and recovery as they reach into the narrator’s emotional depths.

The Poet

Laurinda Lind lives in the U.S. in northern New York State, close to Canada. Some of her poems have appeared in Blue Earth Review, The Keats-Shelley Review, and Stand. Her first poetry chapbook, Trials by Water, was released in summer 2024 (Orchard Street Press). She has won four international poetry awards.

Next poem: Bone idle by Hannah McGivern