121015b

Foraging

After we'd taken students to the roadcut,

the one below the TKE house

(as if such a small school should even

do the greek thing), for a few years,

the gray bank was getting played out:

you could find small bryozoans,

but few other fossils; the only snails

were modern, not Cretaceous;

the closest they'd come to a

mosasaur was to slime a vertebra.

So we moved on, to the roadcut

south of the landfill (amber Baculites

& bored oysters), the one on U.S. 11

just N of town (the miniature urchin

Boletechinus mcglameryi, named for

the female paleontologist who explored

the area, traveling by train), and more.

But each juicy spot was exhausted

in its turn; even 56” of rain per year

wasn't enough for renewal.

Too many knew.

End of poem