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Becoming
On finding that first imprint of the Ur-feather
in the lithographic limestone strata
of Solnhofen, central Bavaria,
those quarry workers and stonecutters
did not think of the Late Jurrassic
but saw the hundred and fifty
million year old solitary feather
as ‘the remains of an angel’.
As they continued to split the slate
a sport of nature was disinterred,
intermediate between the avian and the reptile,
a sort of dino-bird, with scales and feathers
which brought about unheard of
revolutions in the field of Palaeontology
and proved without a doubt
that birds are dinosaurs.
And what of angels? Beaded with sweat
I meet your eyes and contemplate
your true beginnings, when you clambered from
the primal soup, with your light covering
of primitive fluff, your vacant face
and upward stare, those feather-barbs
drooping where your wings had sat,
your bewildered cry.
As surely as any German quarryman
cracks stone from stone in Solnhofen,
Bavaria, your nature’s split
right from the off; that sulphurous whiff,
those salt lagoons and reddish haze
which surface only in your dreams,
your tendency towards fight or flight
when under pressure.
Perhaps an intermediate species we
are still becoming something - what?
I don’t know, but an angel would have cried
to smile like you do, and today
swallows swoop in Bavaria
as Archaeoptryx never could.
And look, as if by chance, looking at us -
that robin’s lizard glance.
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