Ragged hilltop in fog’s scrim

could be a dinosaur’s backbone

paring away the millennia.

Tomorrow, we’ll scratch dirt ourselves,

look for footprint slosh in mud,

cold’s hold on long-left life,

fingerprints of light that chipped glaciers.

We’ll lift these leavings from earth,

mark them for history’s shelves,

the place where all things mingle:

predator and prey still in the same dust,

tooth of the great, great offspring by her ancestor’s hip,

claw of the beast that made this dinosaur bone

resting here now

with nothing to do.