Dinosaur Bones - Oct 10 2022

 

Dinosaur Bones

Oct 10 2022

I was not one of those kids

obsessed with dinosaurs.

But I can see the attraction

of a gargantuan animal

to a powerless child.

And extinction

only adds to the appeal

of such exotic creatures;

the lure

of the unobtainable,

the magic

of a distant past.

Who knew

most were hardly apex predators.

Were, instead

vegetarian

watchful parents

and endearingly small,

parading about

in gaudy feathers,

grazing together

in peaceful herds.

And now, when we have degraded the planet

and poisoned its atmosphere,

when we may very well have engineered

our own extinction,

could we be the new dinosaurs?

Except with plastic instead of bones,

and not even a bird

to carry on our legacy.

In the middle ages

dinosaur fossils

gave rise to dragons,

winged raptors

that breathed fire

rained death from the sky.

So what mythology

might in turn be spun

from our landfills and ocean gyres,

the vanishingly thin stratum of earth

that contains the remnants

of our brief interregnum here?

And who or what will survive

to do the imagining?

Who knew

those kids were seeing the future, not the past.

And that when they grew up

and were told they were in charge

of raising a family

and changing the world,

would feel just as helpless

as when they were young.

This was going to be a fun little trifle. But my subconscious — that invisible amanuensis — was apparently having none of it.