BPR 51 | 2024
Abandoned Bed
—Traveller’s Rest Pit, Cambridge
That dawn we stood over the fossil bed—
wind picking up, feathery picking of cloud
at a distance—we heard the merlin’s
cry before it rose from the scatter
and dropped like a stone.
The dirt friable, the bed
the deep depression of a baking pan,
fossils had come tumbling forth,
evidence of the Great Flood—
or the ascetic splendors
of Pleistocene rhinoceros, red deer,
fresh-water mollusc.
We were field-walking land
laced with nettles, haunted
by the occasional slinking fox,
all covered by houses now.