Caki Wilkinson The Fossil Hunter Because in school she memorized
the strata’s stacks and learned to spot
deposits buried, needle-thick,
beneath the tangled skeins of sage,
she stores her fragments, organized
in plaster jackets, rigmarole
that helps her catalog and name
each disarticulated part.
But scraping off the crusts of age
requires a more pneumatic art,
the trick of sticking joint and slot
to hang the thing, epoxy-slick,
suspended so the welded frame
will disappear in filtered light,
the semblance of a working whole.
She never gets it right.