News: a signature of flight
stays imprinted on blue-black strata
in Earth’s uncertain crust.
(Body long since gone.)
The British, desperate like
everyone for fuel, mining in
the vicinity of Hell, uncovered
icon of wing which dates
from when flight went
unnamed in air. We glance
at accounts concerning
“the fossilized wing of
Earth’s first flying thing.”
Shall we congratulate
this synecdoche of dragonfly
set deep in Derbyshire coal?
In its disappearing act,
it left behind a single-image
autobiography. It induced the very
rocks to recall that once it
possessed the golden air.

Hans Ostrom

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/fossil-of-a-wing/