March 14, 2004
#37 :: Trilobite
It's the size of my fingertip, the weight of a nickel and it was created millions of years ago when a tiny ocean-crawling invertebrate settled irretrievably into the mud. I seem to recall this was a gift - or it might have been something I plucked from those huge baskets of similar fossils on a road trip through Moab or Flagstaff or Albuquerque, a token of forays into the desert and a reminder of my own fragility. Unless I destroy it with a hammer, this fossil will be around for aons longer, suspended in the inexorable act of existence, a stinging rebuke to all our vanities of alleged immortality. We'll die in a few decades, you and I. These words, and all who can understand them, let alone those who can read them, will be gone again and the stone creature will remain.