Through my door your letter: you will
not remember me, but twenty years ago
you were my teacher. We were studying
fossils, and after a holiday in Dorset  

with my family, I gave you a pebble,
a small yellow triangle like a shark tooth,
with a fossil imprint like a tiny flagon
set into it. Since then I have come to think 

this stone would perhaps connect me
with a happier time and place, an individual
now dead. If by any chance you still
possess this fossil  

could you return it to me?
I put up the ladder, burrowed into the loft,
rummaging for the dusty remains
of a collection I gave away long ago: 

heaving aside rolls of wallpaper, the tent, 
old Christmas decorations. In a dark
corner the brittle plastic boxes, and in
the fourth one I found it. So here 

is your stone come back to you.
Your fingers braille its surface. You slide
it into your pocket. The remorseless
clock moves back, for once moves back.

         Andrew Rudd