Fossicking for fossils
A favourite pastime
The mind begins to boggle
As it jostles back in time
Through sedimentary layers
To a mudstone bed
Past a time of slow burial
To a tropical ocean bed
To a time of Bryozoa
And a prehistoric breed
And a marine animal’s forest
And an ancient filter feed
A time of plenty maybe?
A time of changing times?
A time of extinction?
Of catastrophic tides?
A bryozoan loses grip
Somehow somewhere
And drifts without anchor
In a current moving there
It dies a lonely death
Comes to rest upon a floor
Buried in flowing sediment
Is mourned and known not more
Time replaces tissue
And passes out of mind
As it hardens to stone
And aeons pass behind
Age sees uncounted changes
The Earth fashioned anew
The weight of great stages
The bryozoan never knew
Far off in a twinkle
Two eyes come to see
An imprint left uncovered
From that long lost time in sea
And the fossilized remains
Of one hapless bryozoan
Sparking ponder within him
In a new momentous time zone
The changing tide
Who can abate?
We’re all caught up
In this moving fate
All I can hope
And pray to do
Is leave a mark
An imprint too
