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In honor of David Kopaska-Merkel

I sold my first poem to David for Dreams & Nightmares in 2006: The Women of Myth, which became the title poem of my poetry chapbook published by the Island of Wak-Wak last year. (David also published a chapbook with Island of Wak-Wak that same year: Risk Assessment. Go read it!)

At that time, I was just getting serious about speculative poetry, looking to grow community. When I found out David was a geologist, I was excited. He was one of the first fellow scientists I’d engaged as a poet.

I sent him this poem in 2011, inspired by an email exchange we’d had about fossils:

Trilobite

for David KM

silt sieving off banks

ancient currents bury 

generations in strata–

but what is thrust up 

by the slow grunt of ages

remains, after all, 

a just impression

David Kopaska-Merkel passed away this week. The world has lost a light, but gained the enduring mark he leaves on the bedrock of speculative poetry.