Castles and Coprolites

The lamp was shining on the desk, Shining with all its might: The Postdoc did their best to make The sentences read right – This could seem odd because it was The middle of the night. The lab was quiet as could be, The office without a sound. You could not hear a peep, except The sampler spinning round: No conversations could be heard – No students were around. The Postdoc and the Professor Were working close at hand; They wept like anything to see The quantities of grading planned: “If this were only cleared away”, They said, “it would be grand!” “If seven staff with seven pens Graded for half a year. Do you suppose,” the Postdoc said “That they could get it clear?” “I doubt it,” said the Professor And shed a bitter tear. “The time has come,” the Prof she said, “To talk of other things: Of papers – grants – and funding apps – Of seminars – and things – And if you please reviewer three – You’ll think that pigs have wing...

Rolling hills and jagged peaks, bubbling brooks and flowing creeks, Vast swathes of trees turn green to gold, with hues that shift in ebbs and flows, Ten thousand bricks in reds and browns, transforming clays from cliffs to towns; And here between the sea and land, the speckled straw expanse of sand, Gleaming towers, slate grey tiles and tarmac trails extend for miles, Twinkling stars and harbour lights, to sodium glare transforming nights, Shades and dancing shadows bright, creating shifting city sights; And there beyond the winding road, stand stones with tales from long ago, What tales perhaps we’ll never know, symbolic meanings come and go, In landscape then and now align, a layered view of place and time.

Been working on this for a while, inspired by the baby burial from the Neolithic settle ment of Catalhoyuk last year . I've always felt neutral about working with human remains, and the picture of the tiny skeleton being uncovered by Barbara Betz in 2013 was the first time it's given me a lump in the back of my throat. The scientist in me is all for studying human remains, but I wonder what these people would have felt about their infant being excavated. W e're talking here about a culture that was fascinated with skull removal so who knows! Perhaps these new feelings are a result of being a parent (I almost said recently but it's getting close to 1 ye ar!) - a good example of how our own personal situation influences the way we perceive the past. Beneath the floors are hidden treasures, In secret kept, the bones are sealed Of those now gone who’ll dream forever, They wait their time to be revealed. The days they pass without perception The night...

Ten hundred thousand times the Earth has turned Around the Sun that brightly burns In ebbs and flows Ever spinning, tilting, turning; The age of glaciers comes and goes. The ice retreats, the ice expands It creaks and creeps across the lands A frozen beast Slowly grinding, grazing, churning, Carving out the valleys deep. An ever-changing climate, piercing cold and dry With sculpted peaks against the sky A mountain shorn A landscape treeless, bare, eroded, Of all that went before. Colossal creatures roamed the land in herds And Homo sapiens emerged Migrating from afar The human story has unfolded, Driven by the motions of stars.

How do I assess thee? Let me count the ways. I measure thy depth and breadth and height, The microscope can reach, those aspects out of sight Using bright-field and contrast of phase. I measure to the level of my instrumental ways, And analytical precision, by plain and cross polarised light. I count thy inclusions, assessed by eye outright, I count thy voids, where organics have decayed, I measure thy referred and related distribution, Thy particle sorting, if wind or water laid. I measure all facets of your constitution, Each of the many layers that amassed. Revealed, through careful attribution The hidden secrets of the past.