Way Way Back

In 1909 in British Columbia, near the town of Field,
Walcott and wife were riding horses along a mountain trail
Beneath the Burgess Ridge when his wife’s horse slipped a stone,
Tipping and turning over a slab of shale. He got down
And looked; there were fossil crustaceans unknown.

The next summer he climbed up the mountain's side,
Having traced the presumed route of the rock’s slide,
And there he found a shale outcrop as long as a block
Imprinted with Earth’s ancient and tiny livestock.

‘Twas from the dawn of life’s great and complex profusion
From so very long ago—it was the famous Cambrian explosion.