The Shot

The rifle felt heavy, cold in the boy’s hands,
a weight he'd only known in practice.
His father said a porcupine
could wreck a dog, strip bark from trees,
a pest to be rid of, nothing more.

He saw it in the early morning mist,
a slow shape waddling under the pines—
quills like glass needles catching light,
black eyes steady, unaware.

He steadied his aim, held his breath—
a twitch of his trigger finger,
then the crack of a shot,
sharp as shattered glass.
The recoil and the scent 
of gunsmoke linger.

The porcupine shuddered,
turned its small, dark face toward him,
as if it saw the boy behind the gun
and forgave him for not yet knowing
what it meant to take a life.

It staggered then, into the brush,
a trail of blood beading on the ground
like berries crushed beneath a boot.

And when the boy found it among 
the trees and fallen leaves,
he looked at his own hands—
then turned them away,
as if they had grown thorns.

Clayton Campbell Gemmell holds a rifle and a porcupine he shot. Gemmell was born on September 24, 1897, in Blaine Township, Benzie County, Michigan.  Photo date circa 1912. Clayton lived to be 81 and died in 1979 in Columbia, TN. BAHS 2516.

The Fossil Beds Remember

For Harv Burman
An Elegy

At Florissant, where time is pressed flat
and memory sleeps in pages of paper-thin shale,
a voice moved through ponderosa shade,
steady as the winding trail.
 
Harv Burman walked to the outcrop’s edge,
where an ancient lake once held the sky,
and coaxed the quiet earth to speak
of giant sequoias that turned to stone,
and insects pressed into carbon whispers.
 
He turned fossils into stories, and stories into awe.
Kneeling beside a slab of shale, he waited
for a child to see the leaf imprinted there.
The young grew excited. The old looked on
and remembered how to wonder.
 
Along the trail, where the shadows settle
Deep on the shale and weathered soil,
the warm, clear echo of Harv Burman stays,
woven forever into the place he loved.

The Big Stump, Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. Photo by S. W. Veatch.

Note: This post carries a quiet grief for our community, for the paleontology community, and for anyone who ever walked the trails of Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. Harv Burman, a beloved summer seasonal ranger at the Monument for many years, recently passed away. Season after season, Harv returned to the Florissant Fossil Beds, bringing warmth, patience, and an unwavering enthusiasm for discovery to visitors of all ages. 

What Are Rocks For?

A Liturgy of Deep Time

For being older than memory or myth.
For giving up a hidden history, layer upon layer.
For recording the silent closing of a vanished sea.
For marking the unconformity of time itself.
 
For the slow-moving magma that cooled miles beneath the surface,
forming the crystalline foundation of continents.
For bearing the stress of mountain building,
and teaching the craton[1] how to endure.
 
Exposed, rocks stand against relentless weather,
yielding only to the slow insistence of wind, rain, and ice,
and then erosion claims the rock rubble.
 
For the igneous birth in the furnace of the rift.
For sedimentary strata laid down in silence.
For the metamorphic weight that pressures and heats
old rock until it forgets what it was.
 
For echoing the violence of volcanic eruptions.
For gold that rose with superheated water and hid itself in veins of ore.
For hosting the silent, reflective fire of the geode’s heart.
 
For keeping secrets deep in solution caverns,
where calcite drips down stalactites slowly over centuries.
For holding the liquid memory of the sun and ancient plants
within the oil locked in shale.
 
For marking where glaciers melted and shed their stony drift.
For erratics—those displaced giant boulders dropped by vanishing ice.
For the frozen silt and sand that holds the weight of the mammoth’s grave.
For the hunter’s chert to make a sharp edge.

For anchoring our small and wandering steps
on a ground that was here before us,
that will be here long after —
indifferent, patient,
still becoming.
 

By Steven Wade Veatch

                        

What rocks are for. Image generated by S. W. Veatch using ChatGPT.

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[1] A craton is an ancient, stable part of the Earth's continental crust that has survived tectonic plate activity and mountain-building processes for billions of years.

Guest Poet Carlee Spears

Tiger

Stealthy, beautiful

Hunting, running, stalking

Striped hunter, apex predator

Carnivore

By Carlee Spears

Note: Carlee's poem is an acrostic poem. She is 14 years old and is the niece of Steven Veatch. 

Guest Poet Carlee Spears

The Serengeti’s Shadow

Protecting the family

Roar echoing through the heat

Elephants give them wide berth

Dark mane flowing

Ambush in the golden grass

Teeth like ivory daggers

Onward the lionesses strike together

Roar the shakes the land

By Carlee Spears

Note: Carlee's poem is an acrostic poem. She is 14 years old and is the niece of Steven Veatch. 

Guest Poet Carlee Spears

 Deer

Skittish proud
Browsing watching standing
Forests thickets antlers watchful
Standing guarding bounding
Father protecting
Majestic

By Carlee Spears

Note: Carlee's poem is the Diamanté form. She is 14 years old and is the niece of Steven Veatch. 

Guest Poet Wyatt Spears

Donkey

Humble, grey

Trudging, straining, enduring

Hooves, rocks, veins, ore

Weighing, gleaming, tempting

Radiant, precious

Gold!

By Wyatt C. Spears

A donkey and a prospector in Cripple Creek, Colorado—the World’s Greatest Gold Camp. Photo courtesy of the Cripple Creek District Museum. CCDM 808.

Note: Wyatt's poem is the Diamanté form. He is 16 years old and is the nephew of  Steven Veatch.