Science  Write  Now

 [Richard] Owen decided [he would] 'take a run down to make love to Mary Anning at Lyme and then post home.' However, his plans to flatter Mary Anning, and doubtless exploit her ideas, do not appear to have come to fruition.
                                                                        -- Deborah Cadbury, The Dinosaur Hunters

                                                                         His hands:

 

                                    I was surprised by

 

                                    her hands: long-fingered,

 

                                    broad,                         fresh

 

                                                                        and delicate

 

                                        the palms as rough    

 

                                                                        as the belly 

 

                                                                        of a lamb.

 

                                       as any quarryman's.                                                   

 

                                                                        Neither my mother

 

                                                                        nor dear

 

                                                                        brother ever had

           

                                                                        such hands.

                       

                                      Had she been a man,                                                  

 

                                                                        Too,

           

                                                                                    I noted

 

                                        the hard skin of that hand      

           

                                                                        his great,

 

                                                                        assessing eyes

 

                                             might have scratched my  

 

                                    own,                              such eyes

 

                                                                        as I have found 

 

                                        as if I met 

 

                                    the paw of some ancient  

 

                                                                        in the face

 

                                                                        of a falcon.

 

                                       reptile.  The turtle-beak

 

                                    that pecks and pecks

 

                                    at the vegetation it calls on

 

                                    for sustenance.   

  

 

Note: This poem comes from  Elusive Beasts, a life-in-poems of proto-paleontologist Mary Anning (1799-1847) of Lyme Regis, England. Impoverished for most of her days, Anning persisted in digging up and selling fossils to the wealthy collectors, the academics, and the tourists who visited her shop.