generations

she shows me her office where
she sits and writes her thesis,
her mind silently working the
theories of climate change,
one against the other,
her chair rests on the wooden
floors trod by centuries of
scholars, in this same building where
her mother, large with child, with
her, researched crystal growth
under pressures only found deep
within the earth.
and now her mother follows her
down the corridor through the
museum where as a little girl
she ran laughing between the
cases of rocks, wondering what her
mother found so interesting.