It was some weeks after hearing

 The diagnosis of terminal

 Infallibility (and a projected

 Departure date now less

 Than a century off) that I began

 To carve The Admirable Sturgeon.

 It seemed likely the life of so much

 Soapstone would soak into every pore,

 That a still uncaught eighty-footer lurking

 In the deepest riffle of the soul

 Would rise to its clear temporal mate

 And launch a cascade of milted roe

 That might, millennia hence, be

 The prized geodes of undreamt

 Prospectors, from a race vying with

 The lordly scarab for dung in amber.