Ode to DC

Ode to DC My mind now strays from task in hand The letters I type now make no sense. I tap no more and stretch and stand And back I sit no longer tense. I glance towards the waiting files. On top, a paper-weight so dense - A shapeless rock upon the piles; A design embossed that makes no sense. My eyes now glaze; my mind so blurred; I feel a breeze, my mind recast, As down I look, from wind-swept cliffs And see a scene now long-since past. A group of students in weather so wet A wide expanse of shales exposed; On tide-swept rocks we slipped and yet We looked for treasures undisclosed. “A nodule!” he yelled with untold bliss And split with chisel, now revealed So perfect a coil – a spira mirabilis - So flawless; in rock for eons concealed. Now years have passed, I ponder anew A logarithmic spiral, so profound? A spira mirabilis I know ’tis true And scribed in treasure, now re-found. Around the surface I trace my finger; A perfect spiral so revealed Upon the shell I let it linger. How could such beauty be concealed? So was it St Hilda, Abbess of Whitby, Who banished the snakes from her domain? Now coiled in death, hidden so deeply Beneath her abbey, revealed again? Or were you once a living creature, In warm, benign primeval sea? Nothing then you knew of a future Here safe in my study along with me. Dactylioceras commune, ‘DC’ for short, For that’s your name my ammonite Now back on top of papers so dull. ….. I sigh and return to my letter to write 29 April 2013 The fossil, Dactylioceras commune (or 'DC'),was chiselled from the Upper Lias Shales at Whitby some time in 1963 on a fieldtrip with sixth-form students from London. Whitby is a pretty town on the coast of North Yorkshire, England, beloved of fossil hunters and is the town of Bram Stoker and Dracula. St Hilda is supposed to havebanishedthe local snakes from Whitby Abbey and they ended coiled up in the ground as ammonites. For many generations the fossil ammonites had snakes heads carved on them and were sold atexorbitantprices in local curiosity shops!