Fossils Tongue stones Remnants and traces Commentary

Conrad Gessner paleontology

Fossils

• Collect, describe, and try
• to understand
• “stony concretions”
• out of the ground
• as Swiss naturalist
• Conrad Gessner
• in his book De rerum fossilium,
• lapidum et gemmarum,
• the first illustrated
• book on fossils,
• compared glossopetræ
• with shark teeth
• likely without thinking
• that one derived from the other.

Tongue stones

• They fell from the sky
• during moonless nights,
• Pliny the Elder said.
• Maybe they grew naturally in the rock.
• Tongue stones
• dragon tongues
• serpent tongues
• Maltese tongues
• tongues of Saint Paul
• were said
• to detoxify a poisoned drink
• or counteract a snakebite.

Remnants and traces

• If fossils tell us nothing is immutable,
• they also tell us
• a trace might remain.
• Cleaning out my garage,
• I can hardly remember
• where some of these things came from.
• Like the classic fable
• about the man who was granted eternal life
• but forgot to ask for eternal youth
• the past has withered
• into remnants and traces.