I found it on a culm bank near Old Forge:
the fossil of an ancient crawler
printed firmly in a slab of coal.
I took it home, the image of its delicate
horned shell and pincer-claws.
That summer in my bedroom, late one night,
I woke: a green moon eerily aflame
had caught the fossil in its funnel-light.
The creature shone, its eyes
were globed fruit swaying on their stems.
Last night I saw it shining in a dream,
the cilia on fire. Unnerved, I fossicked
in a book to find its name,
a miner in the word-bank, digger
in the tongue’s lost gleaming quarry.