Rock Remembers

Nobody was there to write it down But the ground was taking notes the whole time A leaf falls into mud, gets buried, gets found Sixty million years later, still holding its line

Rock remembers what nobody saw Pressure and time, that's the only law A shell becomes stone, a footprint stays put Rock remembers what nobody wrote

Layer on layer, the mud turns to page Each one a photograph, dated by age Radioactive clocks ticking inside the stone Counting the half-life, telling us how far we've gone

A trilobite curled in a moment of fear Frozen mid-motion for four hundred million years The rings in a tree, the ash in the ice Every one of them keeping the same kind of diary

Rock remembers what nobody saw Pressure and time, that's the only law No pen, no hand, no witness at all Just weight, and patience, and the slowest kind of call

We read it in layers, we read it in bone We read the cold letter that the rock wrote alone And somewhere under your city, under your street Tomorrow's rock is already writing what we repeat