DREAMS OF PALEONTOLOGY

Dragons, gryphons, jabberwocks
Stir restlessly in silent tombs
Of dust pressed ever into rock
By marching steps of waxing, waning moons.
A librarian checks a ticking clock,
A quarter-hour 'til noon.
Clay, awaiting Allah’s breath
To animate the mineral encrusted bones
And stretch a skin, defying death,
Again about the ancient ones,
Waits within the living earth itself
For picks and hammers against the lighted side
Of ebon-undersided stones.
A book is taken from the shelf,
A smiling child takes it home.

A newborn, the infant earthly heir,
Kneels upon the dust of wind-worn ground
To see what only eons could leave there;
What time had lost, a river in its time had found.
The gorge remained where years
Ago the dying river left to form an ageless cloud.
Human fingers brush back soil centuries,
Stacked and filed as books on dusty shelves,
Light shadows, create memories
To consume the likes of mythic gods and faerie elves.
The masters of forgotten history
Ascend the stony steps of Hell.
Terrible lizards from the library,
A child dreams of paleontology.