Ichnites Poem by Mary Champion

(A fossil track or ichnite (Greek 'ιχνιον' (ichnion) - a track, trace or footstep) is a fossilized footprint.)

Where the ground is soft,
along a beach or lake shore,
feet may leave their mark.

And if a flash storm
perchance silts up the hollows,
a trace will remain.


Somewhere in Norfolk,
eight thousand centuries past,
they made their way south -

five friends or five kin?
Returning home or leaving?
There's no way to tell.

But recorded there,
on the Cromer Forest beach,
they left their footprints.


The ghost of a lake,
in a vast Saudi desert,
bears the ancient scars

 
of footprints that show
where human beings and beasts
trekked from Africa.

Seeking adventure?
Fleeing from famine or war?
They left their footprints.


Vast ages ago
along Langebaan Lagoon
on a steep sand hill -

one of our mothers -
a mitochondrial Eve
once left her footprints.


In New Mexico,
some ten millennia gone,
a young human trudged

through the Ice Age cold
and in their arms they carried
a precious infant.

Did they seek shelter
from the ferocious weather?
A fire and a cave?

Had they been exiled?
We can never know their thoughts,
but they left footprints.

In ages to come
they will see where we have been.
There can be no doubt

we will mark our path
as we leave our lethal trail -
our Carbon Footprints.