While digging through some poetry anthologies that I own, I discovered a poem about fossils and geology. As such, I decided to post this poem do to its unusual content (I've never read a poem about fossils before):

Fossils

by Arthur J. Stewart

I come down across stones lightly,

a part of them. Sandstone, shale

something else that's old-bone white -

perhaps the granite knows.

(The translation of time from stone

to stone

takes time. Things

move slowly.)

Trilobites mix quietly with small fishes.

Coal knows more by far than I.

Anthracite blinks in the sun,

smiling sleepily, thinking deeply of seed-ferns.

There as a time when things

fought to the death to decide

whether a clutch of eggs

would bear scales or feathers

But now, Archaeopteryx is just

a clumsy arrow bent in sandstone,

with a three or four-chambered heart

that still sighs with your ear held close.

--Ben

I found the poem, "Lullabye for the Second Millennium" by J. Allyn Rosser, interesting. It provided an interesting "evolution" and "history" of the planet.

Lullabye for the Second Millennium

by J. Allyn Rosser

From the point of view of all time,

these recent changes signal

more a return to a nature

than a departure, than degradation.

In the beginning, after all,

there was boiling rock.

Then waters arranging their bodies

around an era of softer forms:

lichen, grassland, swaying treetops.

Then creatures, movingly fleshed,

treading pathways that hardened.

Then pavement hardening

and cities, monumental.

Soon mostly rock again,

and radiant. More and more like moon.

Soon, sooner than is being thought,

there will be even more light.

The creatures will have stopped

being able to move

or be moved.

And the rock will boil.

--Ben

Here is a very clever poem sharing some frustrating aspects of technology.

Three Six Five Zero

by Conor O'Callaghan

I called up tech and got the voicemail code.

It's taken me this long to find my feet.

Since last we spoke that evening it has snowed.

Fifty-four new messages. Most are old

and blinking into a future months complete.

I contacted tech to get my voicemail code

to hear you voice, not some bozo on the road

the week of Thanksgiving dubbing me his sweet

and breaking up and bleating how it snowed

the Nashville side of Chattanooga and slowed

the beltway to a standstill. The radio said sleet.

The kid in tech set on my voicemail code.

I blew a night on the lightening the system's load,

woke to white enveloping the trees, the street

that's blanked out by my leaving. It had snowed.

Lately others' pasts will turn me cold.

I heard out every message, pressed delete.

I'd happily forget my voice, the mail, its code.

We spoke at last that evening. Then it snowed.

--Ben

Here are a couple of new poems that I found. I think the first provides an interesting insight how logic can be applied to the question of "why are we here." It also presents a sad fact: the universe can be at times apathetic. The second is an ode to madame Curie.

A Man Said to the Universe

by Stephen Crane

A man said to the universe:

"Sir, I exist!"

"However," replied the universe,

"The fact has not created in me

"A sense of obligation."

To Madame Curie

by Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson

Oft have I thrilled at deeds of high emprise,

And yearned to venture into realms unknown,

Thrice blessed she, I deemed, whom God had shown

How to achieve great deeds in woman's guise.

Yet what discov'ry by expectant eyes

Of foreign shores, could vision half the throne

Full gained by her, whose power fully grown

Exceeds the conquerors of th' uncharted skies?

So would I be this woman whom the world

Avows its benefactor; nobler far,

Than Sybil, Joan, Sappho, or Egypt's queen.

In the alembic forged her shafts and hurled

At pain, diseases, waging a humane war;

Greater than this achievement, none, I ween.

--Ben