Hans Ostrom’s “Fossil of a Wing” responds to a fossil find: a wing’s imprint preserved in dark, coal-bearing rock from Derbyshire. The body is long gone, leaving only this signature of flight from a time before flight had a name. The poem places the discovery among British miners searching for fuel near a place it calls Hell, then lingers on the irony that such a delicate trace of dragonfly survives in coal. The speaker’s tone is thoughtful and faintly wry—asking whether we should “congratulate” a fossil—but the mood grows more reverent. The wing becomes a single-image autobiography, coaxing the rocks to remember when it “possessed the golden air.” There is a hushed sense of awe at time, loss, and the strange way earth preserves what once was alive.
Fossil of a Wing — Summary
News: a signature of flight stays imprinted on blue-black strata in Earth’s uncertain crust.
(The body vanished long ago.) The British, desperate like everyone for fuel, mining in
the vicinity of Hell, uncovered this 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.