It's late
the cat's asleep
here on the couch
keeping me company
his belly
moving rythmically
with every silent breath

He sleeps curled up beside
a slab of rock
with fossils from Morocco
ammonites with smooth segmented spirals
and baculites
ancestors of the squid
whose long straight shells
smoothed and polished
look like darts
sharp-pointed at each end
unlike the actual
open-ended cones
that held the living nautiloids

A hundred million years
since these strange creatures
left their shells behind on some
ancient sea floor
the cat's oblivious
yet side by side
the rockslab and the
sleeping cat
create a sense that time
is hardly real
but now my sleepy eyes
remind me that my bedtime
is long past