II. Apocalypto with River & Vestige

What is a trace fossil, but
a cipher embedded in stone,
shrine to the bygone, at once
silent & tolling its argot
bone-feathered & wind-sheared.

More mineral than animal,
an altar to the elements’
vendetta against tender bodies.

Logos for the long departed.
A shorthand for a species.
jaws shaping their way
out of anonymity.
Calligraphy minus cadaver.

A litmus of loss
adrift in an archipelago
of phantom lineages.

//

Archosaurs trekked to this river,
eyes encrusted with salt,
digits splayed like arachnids’ legs,

leaving an airy cargo
in the shallows, overflowing
with data. River

meandered into braid
& the stubble of footprints
stuck like shards

in milky knots of carbonate
& sandstone ripple. The emblem
of skeletal feet remained:

featherweight, a trick of light
& shadow. Later, proof
will harden in veins

of sun-faded shale, their
infinitives living on
in some almost tangible form.

This illegible gristle will begin
to shimmer with afterlife,
will molt into more than its shadow;

puckered rock become cuneiform
become rune become fact —
scrimshaw in the tidal flat.

How fortunate that each
vestige hatches a story,
that matter is never mute,

that such ephemera is stowable.

Cara Waterfall

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