Restless fossils

A fossil is supposed to have stopped. On the wall they haven’t quite. An ammonite peels itself out of the shale, alive, leaving its print behind; a quarry wall holds a single feather the size of the cliff, the rest of the bird presumably further in; an umbrella lies open in a desert full of ammonites; a fossil fish has swum off in a curve and the limestone it is in has bent and cracked to follow; on the deep-sea floor an enormous fish skeleton lies made of white smoke, one breath from gone; a dig beside a city of towers has reached a fossilised circuit board with ammonites set among the chips; in desert rock a hollow keeps the shape of a fox curled up asleep, ears, tail and fur, and the fox has gone.

Stone on the wall keeps a record of whatever lay in it, and goes on keeping it after the thing has left, the way the archive keeps old paperwork and older machines.