Remains
No-one saw them tumble empty down the fathoms,
somersaulting gently on their way, at random
caught and wafted by some subaquatic breeze.
Answering the tenderest of gravities,
in untold multitudes they lightly fell and fell,
each an untwinned bivalve, exoskeletal
remains in drifts and shoals, from sunlit upper zones
plumbing lonelier, colder deeps of monochrome;
they swelled the debris of their disappearing breed,
myriad millions layered thickly, freed from tide
to mass on sunken banks and plains of sediment,
shell-armour buried in a muddy cerement;
and there in pressure’s lifeless reaches they remained.
Until today. For after ages preordained
at last I came, and idly prising strata open,
found imprinted exiles from a vanished ocean:
grey spiralings, photographic negatives
of enigmatic beauty, destined to outlive
the suffocating shale, each embossed depiction
both a perfect secret and its own decryption.
Oblivious, in accretions of geology
no-one guessed them hidden: I am first to see
a work of aeons; first to feel the fascination
of holding in my hand a fragment of Creation.
Martin Briggs lives in Suffolk, England. He only began writing in earnest after retiring from a career in public administration, since when he has been published in various publications on both sides of the Atlantic.
Martin, I am virtually certain there is a story behind this detailed poem of a lost world beneath the ocean. If my surmise is correct, I for one would love to read it.
Yes Roy. Once, walking on the coast of Yorkshire, I discovered an opening at the base of a crumbling cliff. Entering, I found myself in a cavity hollowed out of muddy shale, in which were embedded many millions of uniform fossils. I exhumed some (further weakening the unstable structure) and, controversially, survived.
The complex elegance of this poem’s diction is enchanting. There is a treasure of wonderful scientific words, used in the most expert manner, to describe this vision of fossilized ammonites.
The ammonites went extinct 66 million years ago, after the huge meteoric impact in Central America that wiped out the large dinosaurs and many other species, both plant and animal. This cataclysmic event make possible the spread of mammalian life on earth.
I normally dislike near-rhymes, but i don’t object to them here because in a very sophisticated poem such as this, rhyme plays second fiddle to the sheer exuberance of hypnotic language. One minor thing: I would get rid of the capital “C” on the word “Creation” in the last line. It adds an unnecessary touch of pietism.
Thank you, Joseph. I am well on the way to fossilisation myself, and appreciate your positive reaction.
Beautiful poem for all the reasons so well articulated by Dr. Salemi but I love the “touch of pietism”.
Thank you, jd. The capital C was indeed a deliberate choice; but, majuscule or minuscule, the difference is only subjective.
Your focus on meter rather than rhyme allows for rich use of multisyllabic scientific words, and imagery not often seen in such profusion in a poem, Martin.
You’ve captured well the idea of mass extinction and legacy, a very pertinent topic as Man accelerates the latest mass extinction.
So glad you avoided your own demise to bring us this wonderful piece.
Thank you, Paul, for reading and commenting. I feel particularly extinct this morning…..
Martin, thank you for this exquisite piece with its beautifully chosen words, woven together perfectly. I admire your wordsmithery and I am particularly moved by the tender and very human heart of the poem revealed in the closing stanza. Glorious!
Thank you, Susan. Your approval means a lot.
An exceptionally beautiful description and appreciation of Creation, Martin. The scientific vocabulary and the attention to graceful detail reveal a mind contemplating the wonders of number and order and shape and time in one small portion of the universe–a portion seemingly saved for him individually by a beneficent Providence. Overall, it expresses the happy qualities of thought inspired by Intelligent Design. There is one word “aeons” that might have a special meaning. If it means simply long ages of time, then the poem is a shining tribute to Progressive Creation. But if it has the spiritual meaning of aspects and singular forces within Creation, the ideas here are still more profound–and emotional, because the aeons may represent an indistinct longing for recognition achieved in the discovery you describe. It may be you will not say which meaning of “aeons” is intended. But please accept from me an intense appreciation for the double possibility.
Thank you, Margaret, for your appreciative and interesting response. Interesting because the second meaning of aeon is one that had not occurred to me: I intended simply the temporal, geological sense, and can claim no credit for the deeper significance you read into it. But I’m pleased that it set off this train of thought.
Glad you’re pleased, Martin. This is yet another example of how we write more than we know when we employ the great treasures of our language and culture, containing so much that may not be uppermost to our thinking at the time.