Halfway through a beard-scratch I found
a not so clearly Wiki-shucked happening
or notable death/birth that screamed, subject:
OUTLINES OF AN ATTEMPT TO ESTABLISH
A KNOWLEDGE OF EXTRANEOUS FOSSILS,
ON SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES, BY WILLIAM MARTIN.
Digitized by Google.
I wanted that blotchy-scanned EXTRANEOUS
to mean extraneous as I wanted it to mean
but found a very curious large striated leaf,
name unknown, in a nodule of iron-stone.
I thought – no, hoped that the author
would be mockable: too male,
empirical and lamb-chopped
but found a small fish, perfect,
in marble.
I wanted to use the image of this man scrabbling –
and salivating, I wrote – in dusty piles
of over-the-shoulder tossed fossils
but found the under valve
of an oyster shell, very perfect,
and the tail of a lobster.
I would then, the fast-planning went, dig up
to me here now MacBook-rifling through –
and I wrote this – the trash of history
but found crystals of cawk on stalactite,
an elephant’s grinder, a lobster tail
and a fossil Crocodile; the head, teeth,
and orbit of the eye: perfect.
I wanted to find nothing but read
that extraneous fossils exist only in form;
take away such form
and they become identical
with mineral matter.
I wanted only 1809 but found also 1817
and in the latter proof that the former mattered
along with a very good small mass of bones, charred,
part of a curious jaw, the perfect tail of a lobster
and an American fern,
leaves tinged beautifully
with pyrites.
I wanted to find nothing but here I am
sat struck too male, cankered
and callus-footing across
this untipped landskip of
a very perfect satyr-faced crab,
a dog-tooth, hexagonal,
leaves much resembling
the mouse ear in argillaceous clay,
the greatest part of a most beautiful small
feathered encrimite,
shewing its vertebral column
and the extended minute arms,
very perfect, and the two claws
of a lobster.
