Folded Word
Exploring the world, one voice at a time.
Fossils
Out the back road of Charlestown, down a steep hill, across a disused railway, around a rough-brambled coastline and under the line of high tide: layers of grey mudstone, semi-eroded, open to the touch and tell their story.
Some layers say little. Others retain ambiguous marks of roots or twigs. Still others teem with imprints: crowding, curling wormlife, centre-spined like eels; thick, bulbous root-clumps and once a circular blobbishness, symmetried like a horseshoe crab.
If I read correctly, this place was a saltmarsh, lower to the sea when ice pressed down the land, but periodically writhing with life. Today’s silting shore teems with mussels and black seaweed, printing future pages in zigzags and ovals.
©2019 by Fiona Jones
A response to Folded Field Notes : Imprint
Fiona Jones is a Regular Contributor to Folded Word. She is a part-time teacher, a parent and a spare-time writer living in Scotland. She has taught her children how to make presents from mud, pillows from bulrushes and puddings from wild apples and berries: her children are teaching her about tablets and smartphones. Fiona has fiction published or upcoming on Buckshot Magazine, Silver Pen, Longshot Island and various others. Her nonfiction has appeared on Mothers Always Write and Mum Life Stories. Fiona tweets as https://twitter.com/FiiJ20, links in as https://www.linkedin.com/in/fiona-jones-0a718518/detail/recent-activity/ and books her face as https://www.facebook.com/FiiJ20/.
2 Comments on “Fossils”
Leave a Reply
Folded Word 
I loved how you left us thinking about imprints! Thanks Fiona!
LikeLike
Love places like this, the stories they tell. Thanks for taking us to yet another one.
LikeLiked by 1 person