Did Dinosaurs? Poem by gershon hepner

DID DINOSAURS?


Did dinosaurs who lived in trees
once fall like ancient gliders,
or did they grow wings by degrees
and rise, archaic spiders,
from webs the earth had trapped them in
to soar into the skies,
of birds and ancestors the kin,
while imitating flies?

It's hard to guess how once Jurassic
these giants locomoted.
Some creature must have been audacic
as down from trees he floated
not fearing that his neck would break
and upward mobile surely,
perhaps considered as a flake,
regarded rather poorly
by earthbound dinosaurs who wore
no wings, quite uninclined
to rise above the ground to soar
with sauric flight in mind.

I stay on earth and never rise,
transfixed by flying fear,
because I know that other guys
would jeopardize and jeer
my upward moves, and so I stay
well-grounded with both feet,
but if I have to run away
I'll work out something neat;
perhaps an engine in my chest
with gas pumped through a nozzle,
extracted, a Jurassic jest,
from some extinct bird fossil.



6/10/98