Friday Poem

Ode to a Trilobite

Frank P. Zeidler (1935)

The stone mason who split the limestone block
With lucky stroke of hammer left quite whole
The imprint that you gave Niagara rock
When you met death in open sea or shoal.
He little thought, that workman did, when he
Began to pound the stone to make it square
That ancient bodies of Silurian time
Did die to make a stony bottomed sea,
While later years exposed to open air
The creatures that had died, as massive lime.

I found your mark before the weather wore
The stone too smooth; I cut you from your grave;
I took you home to swell my fossil store;
Now your diatomaceous corpse I save.
To look at you inspires profound thought;
You represent a million million years!
What countless lives have suffered since your day!
What trials of life has Nature slowly wrought!
What struggles to survive! What deaths! What fears!
What agony and pain since your decay!

But more than these, Man's littleness you preach.
You and your kind once ruled the sea. That state
Of evolution you began to reach
Harsh Nature did not like and sealed your fate.
She either took your favorite food away
Or made your enemies a bit too strong.
The struggle ended when your kind was not.
And so these present men who own this day
From selves, or rats, or bugs will suffer wrong
And Nature soon may terminate the lot.

"Aha!" thinks Man, "a rare and gorgeous day
This is! Would that it never had an end!"
And that you hear your trilobitic comrades say
When in the seas the sun a ray did send.
"Was ever woe so great," cries Man, "as mine?"
You heard a creature bit in two say that;
Another chased by cannibals so cried.
Says man to maid, "Was every face as thine?"
And trilobitic ghosts can laugh there at,
For they in life had many times so sighed.

"My business operations now demand
A larger field," says Man, "in which to build."
And forthwith with his weapons well in hand
Proceeds to see what others can be killed.
"I did the same," you, trilobite, might say;
"Of food for me and mine there was a dearth.
We ganged and rushed and fought from place to place;
We ate and killed and died along the way.
Our bodies and our foes now make the earth.
Survival in this life is like a race."

About your life I further speculate:
My wretched art can not express it right.
This fossil tells the story of your fate.
The only thing there is to life is fight;
Its basic rule is nothing else but this;
Since life must on itself forever prey.
And so it is with Man and trilobite.
I think when I have spent my life amiss,
A funny creature there will come one day
Who, digging up, will call me "dilobite."