To know the Past, the vast of Time
And Long-Lost players on its stage
We seek in shards of Muds and Grime
The traces of all bygone Age

A pickaxe can these pages turn
Of Earth’s great layered Book of Stone
In which faint Words their places earn
With letters writ in shell and Bone

The broken Script we find is dim
Most lines are cracked, the reading slow
But great finds give us Lessons in
A curving Claw, or fossil Toe

The reptile hand, or bony fin
We reach toward, and attempt to know
As fellow Life, is distant Kin;
The hand we reach for is our Own.

-- Victor Leshyk