Thoughts upon Dating a Tyrannosaurus Rex
I thought your kind were extinct:
You appeared on the scene and all
Cretaceous creatures scattered.
Surprising: the soft, sad voice
and loneliness behind the roar.
Yet I trembled, unearthed.
Who could blame me?
Four feet of skull, so heavy to carry erect!
Rapacious hunger brewed tempers to roll
heads bloody, but never mine. Yet
you learned the human language, the credos
of our time. When you formed
my name, all instinct
bade me follow. And when
your talons penetrated my
soft flesh, I swear
the whole Jurassic
rose up and screamed. How
your terrific frame
diminished: how incongruous our fit.
I leaned the lily
of my ear against the brown scales
near sacral ribs,
and heard the palpitations of doubt:
the consciousness of a modern woman.
I was not trapped there in
a tyranny of love.
