Hobson’s Choice

Burning Shale Photo by Douglas C. Pizac of AP

hollows haunt the deep shale
pools of dinosaur tears
remnant seas sad of time
burned and blackened but sweet
supple skeletons breathe
beneath civilizations
life beats in their promise
the future will come at a cost

 

 

(originally posted December 2013)

Downsizing

Fossil of Archaeopteryx

 

birds trembled the earth
with feet of their fathers
grew leathery wings
from featherless fingers
singing in roars that fell
dead upon lavaflows
back when one landmass
heaved up from one sea
cataclysmically boiling
beneath roiling skies
thick with pyroclast fumes
branding brainstems
with fight or flight
instinct and impetus
sealed within seeds
evolution would germinate
bearing the dinosaur
down through the aeons
to light on your finger

Fossils

Giant Dragonfly Fossil

fragile cadavers
paleo-lifeforms preserved
swaddled in stone
through cataclysmic eons
beneath my curious feet

Tiny Dinosaurs

 

Sinornithosaurus Millenii Fossil
From Hong Kong Science Museum

 

 

winged and weightless

delighting the skies

hollow bones holding

pre-human memory

carrying telltale of time

tree to tree cloud to cloud

all the stories of life

and their fossilized secrets

revealed and recounted

by notes of an eidetic music

immensely enjoyed though

entirely misunderstood

by the modern

preoccupied mind

itself bearing oft ignored

imprints of eden

 

 

From my books Onionskin and Legacies (vol. 2)

Hobson’s Choice

 

“Fracking” by David W Coffin

 

 

hollows haunt the deep shale
pools of dinosaur tears
remnant seas sad of time
burned and blackened but sweet
supple skeletons breathe
beneath civilizations
life beats in their promise
the future will come at a cost

 

 

From my books Bohemian Scents and Legacies (vol. 1)

Archaeopteryx

Archaeopteryx – The Berlin Specimen
Image from Wikipedia.org

feather-winged dinosaur
or sharp-toothed bird
perhaps something between
neither one nor the other

hard-hearted conservative
or soft-headed liberal
perhaps something between
neither one nor the other

use of matches or lighter
unwelcome in flammable tents
guns and sausages draw down
the scorn of new doyens

we odd creatures of character
true to ourselves left to
locate and dig up the bones
of our ancestors

how else to prove we
once held no less natural
a standing than even the
most effete snobs

seems we no sooner laid down
to rest between layers
of shale when they deemed
our ubiquity henceforth iniquity

Metamorph

“Cape May Jetty”
Painting by Jonelle Summerfield
At jonellesummerfield.blogspot.com

I remember the beach
before dinosaur glands
coarsely stunted my reach
heat reflected off sands
rose in shimmering rings
an illusion of motion
by my motionless wings
surfing winds chased the ocean
under candescent clouds
that deflected red sun
onto unwary crowds
I had no means to run
from scales climbing my skin
like a jetty of stones
hides crustaceans within
age clawed into my bones