Fossil Beach

 

Fossil Beach

Take off your shoes, walk with me.
We’ll squish our toes.
Miles it goes, the busy beach
brimming with tiny crabs
until we reach—

Here, this outcrop:
from salty pools you can pluck
dead souls reborn as rock,
washed by tides
just as they were bathed so long ago
smacking their lips, happy as clams
wafting a seaside scent
like spilled beer.

We humans still seek contentment.
Here it has lain millions of years.

This fossil, bivalve,  
from time before meadowlarks
before Neanderthal
before waltz
in the shape of a harp roughhewn,
plays a melody murky, out of tune.

Wizened he is.
Surface ribs roll. Feel the deep chuckle.
How dense in your fingers,
how nicely he fits against your palm.
From the sand he shakes your hand!  
Greetings from the Paleozoic tavern,
surfin’ oldies on the jukebox.

Some day, may you and I
jolly in our bones
return as stones.

…..

From my book Foggy Dog
First published in Plum Tree Tavern--Thank you editor Russell Streur
Photo by me of one of my fossil friends.

Note: there’s a cove—it’s a healthy hike to get there—where a vein of fossils is exposed in the bluff just above sea level. A high tide combined with winter storm will dislodge fossils which fall into the surf. At low tide barefoot in shallow water I can gather them. I love this. From the weedy tide pools there’s a smell oddly like beer. Somehow I feel the ancient clams love it, too, greeting me with a sandy handshake. They are are a mix of stone imprints and actual shells. Like my memory: pieces of reality washed, filtered in salty blood, set in stone.