Size / / /
I read about a Chinese scientist who found a mountain
just bursting with impressions
and indentations of things
that lived before there were bones.
I saw a drawing of an armored sea creature
three feet long, multi-legged,
mouth full of row on row of jagged plates.
A first predator, first nightmare, first symptom of madness.
Our ancestor was born in that same era,
in that same hot ocean;
a slippery little wormy thing
with the beginnings of a spine.