Discover cuneiform tablet hieroglyph'd with fossilized remains of tiny lives, shell lives, clams smaller than my little-finger nail embedded side by side tossed up by Lake Michigan knowing I needed it, some special miracle to re-alert me to the miracle of Life, this tablet the size of my hand not written by Charlton Heston special effects, this tablet written by the only God there is, this tablet written in shell language tinged with rust-color'd sand, all-in-all in my hand, this gift from the Sea, this sea-whispered-me geological whisper, this whisper-echo of the eonic Earth, this heirloom from greatgreatGrandmother Earth, this oracular telegram from the Deep, this Deep Image washed up to my feet as if directed specifically to me, this many-million-year momento from the ocean that was here before Lake Michigan existed, this enigma this ancient rune this cosmos mandala this inevitable whatever-it-is, this rosetta-stone translating the past into the present and present into the past, this wordless dignity, this compact cemetery of lives whose tombstones are more immortal than the tombstones of humankind.
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