Ammonite (Poetry)

With harmony of form, the spiral curves
its primitive design upon the page -
cold bone picked free of flesh - no conscious nerves
betray the image measured by its cage.

The fossil holds a brief, soft-bodied thought
tightly coiled - a poem in a shell -
a passing phrase that evolution wrought
then trapped its echo in a time-locked cell.

Eroding rocks eventually reveal
their cryptic shibboleths, translating free
verse interpretations - termed surreal -
genetic codes compressed as poetry.

So round and round the empty helix spins -
a prototype of long-extinct designs -
and delineates the hollow ache within,
reverberating soft between the lines.