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.