Terrible Lizards
April 3 2023
I don’t care if dinosaurs
had colourful feathers
hunted in packs
cared for their young.
I can understand
the fascination of kids,
the admiration of the small and powerless
for the big and strong.
But scientists?
Is it because of our similarities
more than our differences;
the commonality
of life on earth?
That but for the luck of an asteroid
they might have eventually become
us?
Or are they simply charismatic
mysterious
magnificent?
Hundreds of millions of years,
while we’ve been tens of thousands.
So unlike them
will our bones even register,
our great works
leave any evidence
we were ever here?
Perhaps that's it.
We admire their success,
even envy them.
Insecure in our mastery.
As well as aware
how random intersections
in time and space
are as indifferent to small naked mammals
as they are to terrible lizards,
even ones who shook the ground
when they walked,
had jaws that crushed bone.
A minor planet
circling an average sun
where surely something
is heading our way.
I really do wonder if all the research money and brilliant minds applied to digging up old bones and imagining a bygone world could be put to better use solving real problems in the here and now. While I admire the pursuit of curiosity for its own sake, and understand the appeal of such magnificent — almost legendary — creatures, is there really anything useful to learn? And don't most of us manage to outgrow their hold?
This is another poem that questions our human conceit of centrality: here by grace of God; dominion over the planet; masters of the universe. We regard the dinosaurs as an evolutionary failure. But they were hardly that. (Which is why that line – we admire their success – is intentionally jarring. Because I think the attitude most often is to figure they were simply unfit and destined to be left behind.) We have an unimaginably long way to go to match their longevity. And if we do ourselves in, it will not because of some random external event; it will be by our own hand.
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