Dinosaur
“Nature was quick to pass the sponge of her deluges over these awkward sketches, these first nightmares of Life.”
- Auguste de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam
You knew I was real when you plucked me from clay
And felt the old powers. White bone in white rock,
Wreckage of their own dialects, signal
Of a word that is its own metaphor.
They briefly made your mouth a chapel of limestone.
Roll the pebbles on your tongue. Get a feel for them
As they sublimate into my likeness
While minerals on the bore rework the sun.
Yes, you know I am real, reassembling
My divisions with imprecise guesswork,
Typical of self-styled masters of the atom.
Then you name me as if you remember me.
I am named only so this grave is less empty.
I am remembered longer than I was known
And yet named in a dead language.
If you could truly curl your tongue through those signs
Your larynx would congest with sand.
Sand is the masterpiece of our death.
Sand is the punctuation of the eons
Uncontained by even your dead languages.
Imperious lungs, there is not breath enough
To even count the days between then and now.
Walk the shifting beaches, Conquerer.
Walk them. Take chisel to rock in the hope
Of hearing the sound that unwrites extinction.
Or maybe you’ll miss and crack a thumb
Into the shadow of a ghost of a child
Who knows these creatures did not wish to die,
But did not know how to go on living -
Just like your footprints in the sand
