Megafauna
Forest Park
Eremotherium
Eohippus
Beautiful Armadillo
Coelacanth
Pakicetus
Glyptodon
Shrub-ox (Aurochs)
Argentavis
Florida Spectacled Bear
Hyde Park Mastodon
Asphalt (La Brea) Stork
Dire Wolf
Saiga Antelope
Camelops
Saber-toothed Salmon
American Lion
Forest Park
Two boys are out early, towing a Radio Flyer full of garden tools,
brooms, butterfly nets, a plastic mower and a cage for crows.
They pass me on the high point of the road, salt grass
soaked by rain. I’m fixing a flat tire when Jake, five
and Tony, seven, admit they’re out after baby
dinosaurs, they want to go back in time to zero.
A glyptodon might be nice, one says, and the other
nods but hesitates, to be sure it’s not a mammal.
Down in that hollow of oaks, one could have a cave
or a lair. The boys totter along as the sun comes up
on a pasture dotted with cows or violets going gold.
Flat fixed, I bike to the Rhinecliff Bridge to see
if any bass patrol the shoals, as the tide subsides
and a harbor tug pokes an oil barge up the river.
Eremotherium
The Panama land bridge wasn't there the week before:
a giant ground sloth dipped a fore paw into crab grass,
then lurched and leaped. It took her descendants
a hundred years but they made it to the Myakka River,
where last week we saw a hundred gators sunning.
Across DeSoto County, in Arcadia, the dry prairies,
where Ponce de Leon would seek to cheat death
with a promise of eternal youth, we bushwhacked
long pine, slash pine, palmetto. Eremotherium,
early mother to us all, grazes giant dandelions
and dives for underwater kelp, stands taller
than you or me at fifteen feet, upright now
to cast her eyes across the Gulf of Mexico,
sniffing for Irish elk, aurochs, two-ton armadillos,
cave bears, sabre-tooth cats and hairless humans
who've already downed a relative for that night’s meal.
Eohippus
In the age of grass, the tiny equines had no where to go.
Beringian winds across the Mammoth steppe.
Beautiful Armadillo
Coelacanth
Pakicetus
Glyptodon
Frankie the T-Rex storms into the UN General Assembly (after Sadaam Huseein,Donald Trump etc.) and talks to the people - it is not too late
Shrub-ox or Aurochs
Argentavis
Florida Spectacled Bear
Megalodon
Asphalt (or La Brea) Stork
Dire Wolf
Saiga Antelope
Camelops
Saber-toothed Salmon
American Lion