La Plume d’Anthropocène

In the last few years,
turns of the seasons,
the fashion seasons
dans le monde paleontologique,

the dinosaurs have been groomed
with the softness of feathers,
even to the lucid dreams of designs
in avian color, titanium sheen of starlings.

So sudden!
Dinosaurs are dressed
in the latest fashion in ornate
patterns of immaculate extinction.

Yet we of the mammalian
generic Anthropo- struggle to evolve
at the pace of dead trilobites.
Our plumage remains invisible.

Our footprints stain Earth in drying red.
We evolve so slowly, save downward
toward the lowly dust
of our sere demise.

Still,
extinction is no disgrace.

The end is quick, memorialized
in the slow evolution of memorial agate.
We grow beautiful and virtuous again
all together in the same lithic kiln.

Richard Fenton Sederstrom was raised and lives in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and the North Woods of Minnesota. Sederstrom is the author of eight books of poetry, his latest book, The Dun Book, published by Jackpine Writers' Bloc, was released last fall. Read other articles by Richard Fenton.