Every Wrong Map She Corrected (Mary Anning)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
You were eleven
when you found
the first one.
Your father
had just died
and the family
needed the money
and the cliffs
at Lyme Regis
were full of things
that should not
have been
in a cliff
and you were
the kind of girl
who noticed
what should not
be in a cliff
and you dug it out
with your hands
and a small chisel
and the thing
had the cool chalky weight
of a question
the cliff
had been holding
for a hundred
and eighty
million years
and had only now
found
the right girl
to ask.

[Verse 2]
The gentlemen
in London
bought
what you found.
The gentlemen
in London
put their names
on what you found.
The gentlemen
in London
published papers
about what you found
and the papers
smelled faintly
of bay rum
and the particular
stale cream
of a man
who has not
been cold or wet
in a Dorset cliff face
since
the last time
someone else
was cold and wet
in a Dorset cliff face
for him.

[Chorus]
You found
the first
complete ichthyosaur.
You found
the first
plesiosaur.
You found
the first
pterosaur
in Britain.
You taught yourself
anatomy
and geology
and comparative osteology
from books
you could not
afford
to own
and borrowed
from the gentlemen
who were publishing
your bones
under
their names
and the temporal lobe
of a woman
who teaches herself
a dead animal's
skeleton
by candlelight
in a cottage
in Dorset
is building
a library
the gentlemen
do not have
a key to.

[Outro]
Lightning
killed your dog
and almost
killed you
when you were
fifteen months old
and the neighbors
said
you were strange
after the lightning
and you were
strange
after the lightning
and the strangeness
was the thing
that let you see
the shape
in the cliff
that two hundred years
of fishermen
had walked past
every morning
and the shape
was a sea dragon
and it had been
waiting
for the strange girl
with the chisel
the whole time.

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