by Glen Martin Fitch
He saw a two inch rock
amid the sand.
He saw three sections
with three lobes across.
He blinked his eye and
dropped it with a toss and
poked another
with his sucker hand.
I saw a shield like shell
of armored scales,
Saw tentacle like eyes,
a sword like spine.
I watched it hover
waiting for a sign
to dart and gulp some shrimp
who squirms and flails.
He didn't see
a creature lost a mile above,
five hundred million years
away from home,
transformed from flesh
to lime and clay,
and trapped in layered time
in pile on pile.
He saw
"as is."
But what he couldn't see:
a trilobite is awe and irony.
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ABOUT THE POET ~
Glen Fitch is a 16th Century poet lost in the 21st Century. Born near Niagara Falls, educated in the Catskills, thirty years on the Monterey Bay he now lives in Palm Springs. Retail not academics has paid the bills. Someday he will finish Spenser's "The Fairie Queene."
Last updated August 24, 2011