FOSSIL

To a Cynodont*, discovered in Nieu Bethesda

Cast in stone
the face of a small reptile
nose uppermost, gasps for breath
as it drowns in a mudslide
two hundred and twenty million years ago.

After all this time
the thing is there for us to touch
history has uncovered it:
mournful snout, popping eyes
and the vestige of one clawing foot
emerging from the dry riverbed.

What hopes were there, back then,
waiting in soil and cloud?
Did the seabed tremble with latent meaning?
Were feathers envisaged, and a thinking brain?

We were trusted with it all.

But we’ve made a mess of it, haven’t we,
since God made a pact with Noah –
we’ve cocked it up
with our rush to plunder.

And now we feel the suck of the mud
the downward drag of our own times.
What Hand will reach down to us
in our extremity? What Rainbow form
in our contentious sky?

Jane Fox (Abrahams)
​
(*Cynodont: remote Permian ancestor of present-day mammals.)