A Natural History

or, At the Museum

By Mark FrancisPublished 2 years ago • 1 min read

we went and arrived by ancient subway

the car loudly rattling through all its steel bones

–our much softer ones did the same–

charging and drooling, finally to slither

onto its destined pause at the grand museum

where you and i hopped out, quite queasy

like mammals surviving the last extinction.

our evolved bipedal limbs clambered quickly up the stone stairways

which opened on vast displays--every chamber

a courtyard, palace, temple

to Nature and its limitless past:

giant totems, microcosmic dioramas,

spotted replicas and carcasses of so many creatures

(though we touched butterflies live hatching, hatched).

yet we knew, evinced gigantically on entrance,

that dragon bones, DRAGON BONES, were it, were the thing,

i.e., were everything; over myriad exhibits, the whole edifice, dominating!

now later, reflecting, deflecting, we deem that seemed proper

since they were here far long before, and for far more long

than any who clutch phones, etc. more readily than each other’s hands

who anxiously expand, expend themselves, in oil smoke, black mirrors

Published translator of verse and original writer of haiku, senryu, lyric, occasional and genre poetry and speculative fiction.

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