In the dark before dawn

Seventy-five miles an hour feels like slow motion

Winding among hulking shadows.

The road stretches only as far as the high-beams

And the white line running ahead to the mounded trunk of allosaurus

Impassable—

Until we round the bend, and reflectors mark the pass

With lines of white and gold stars.

Stegosaurus sleeps, his spiny plates cracked with age

And a herd of maiasaurs huddle with their young.

Another bend lights the velvet blanket,

Summer-autumn gold,

That drapes them.

Their misty breath in the cool still-night air

clings to every ridge, brow, and tail.

But where the road cuts through

I see your bones

Dusty brittle blocks of earth

Stacked in crumbling rows.

Still I wonder, what do dinosaurs dream?

In this heady age of bright machines—