ODE TO A TYRANNOSAURUS

Sombre is inoculation

Of a tooth that refuses to sway;

Sturdy yet diseased,

Yet the pain has to be eased

As night is the rest of the day.

When kingdoms were in formation,

Where night is sought for in the fires of hell,

Was there love among prehistories,

An eye to see all mysteries

And when the timeless bell

Shone like thunder bright

And pathogenic ferns

Curled in chilling turns,

There is Gorgon's sight;

There beneath the rolling wash,

Bath'd in flotsam overnight

With a cliff-side for a pillow,

Hitherto a brutal cosh,

Died the fatal dinosaur,

Its claws upcurled in sorrow

Which once made many sore.

Tyrannosaurus, pitiful your smile,

Even now, as you lie in the sea,

Your scales turned blue like emotion,

Unmatched by river or ocean.

The evil done was inconsequential

To your upright majesty.

If not you then some other,

More debase, to Death its mother.

Can they grant an amnesty,

Release you from their tide?

In this you lie resigned,

Eighty feet of pois'nous blue

But unknown is what is true.

You always were the suff'ring kind,

You rolled out Nature's darker side;

Your shadow quenched celestial fire

And wandered with you, spire for spire,

Your sole companion in a world made small.

To rule the world you tried,

The elixir grew higher,

Your infant passions grew;

How swayed the oak beneath your stride,

You cast ambition aside.

'With whale-like girth and waspish wrath,'

Would justify your epitaph.

4/1/88.

You're at the bottom!