Tuesday poem: Ammonite
September 10, 2012
Ammonite
Stony rose blooms from centre, soft thorns of feelers long since lost.
Aeons before any bee roamed from flower to flower, fields of round shells
pumped through seas, curled rams horns butting at white choppy waves.
Now round-eyed fossil stares at me from my desk, surprised to see
one so pink, so soft, so new. Soil frozen bubble reminds that our kind
is also a wink in time’s long receipt; a mere fingerprint of bone will
one day remain, hardened into artefact like ammonite, to be mined
and grasped (if the finders should have hands). Old cockle swirl,
ridge-back, cocks a snook at certitude; oceans of twisting time
sound through mud-filled shofar, airless conch, a mazy call of years.
P.S. Cottier
Having returned, very tired, from the Poets Train last night, I’ll recycle this old, though as yet unpublished, poem and give a more train-specific post when I’m back to my routine. Or timetable.
Suffice to say that many words have passed these lips over the weekend!
Click this feather and see if any more poems are dealing with ancient creatures:
There’s one terrific poem about robots on Tim Jones’s blog. Take my word for it…
PS Cottier 
I’m surprised that’s an unpublished poem, because it’s so good: “time’s long receipt” is a wonderful phrase. No robot could have written this (he says, risking the wrath of Skynet).
You know how it is Tim, (or perhaps you don’t), you send a poem out here and there, once or twice, and then you forget about it. Then, two years later, you’re thinking ‘what the flightless New Zealand bird will I post today?’ and the answer comes: ‘Ammonite’.
That’s happened to you, hasn’t it? I think it has to all of us.