I swallowed earth for this:
a strawberry leaf
twisted
the wind glided by water
Matter
in the layer between
crushed in time
Matter
what they left behind
can be read on an arrow
head
Dripping stone
geologically: all we know
broken skull, broken rock
extracting informationin the hardest of materials
at the back of the neck
finding language
close to the lungs
expanding matter
darker
in the grassin a drop of water
is earth not
what we came from
a compression of
a true material
expanded at its brightest point
a supernova
on a petal
and so we are ancient enough
in the beginning, volcanic:gas, water, cells
in the sediments
in hollows, levels; uppermost:
bone, tissue, organs
visible in time
we expand heat from fratures
part the growth rings of trees
with amber and rust
boned from evolution
you are, I am
a lecture on fossils
we think that the watery substance
before the thinkable
is a sound in memory
a language we peer beneath
from the sound of marrow and fibres
thinkable enough, certainly
Out of these places
two types of grammar:
we inflect trees
analyse a riverbed
years laid down in codes
microbes millions atoms
in animals and the residue of plants.