"Oh, to be a clay, the life 'tis grand!"
Cried Illite as he jeered at sand.
"For here I lie, so lithe, so flat,
And there you roll, all round and fat."
Quartz answered him with nature light,
While laughing at his foolish plight,
"Tease not my form, for soon you'll see,
When pressures rise, you'll envy me!"

But still clay laughed hysterically,
'Til the prophecy did come to be,
Metamorphism began to start,
And Illite wept as he fell apart.
"Oh, Quartz, your form I now do miss,
For I can barely stand this sub-greenschist!"
"Goodbye, my friend." sighed quartz that night
As the clay reformed to make muscovite.

Eventually the pressure stalled
And temperature began to fall.
Quartz looked around to see new faces,
Her old friends left no familiar traces.
Here was garnet, red and gaudy,
There was hornblende, horribly baudy!
Biotite, he laughed with mirth,
And the Plagioclase twins did hail their birth.

Another million years did fade,
And they all began to retrograde.
Said Garnet to her Plagioclase friend,
"This mica jerk, my heart will rend!
For Mg deep in my physique,
He steals with no uncertain cheek!"
To this replied old quartz recalling,
To garnet who was most appalling,
"You must remember times afore,
When temperatures rose, yes up they soared!
Pressure too, oh how t'was raised!
And you were born at the death of clays.
So argue not of his maturation,
'Tis all in the ways of equilibration."

     -- Tuefelin Peare