Shifting Sands

Shifting sands
Rhythms of eternity
Contemplating footsteps
Of dinosaurs caught in time.
Impressions captured in oozing mud
Preserved now to remind us
That once, long ago
They were not just relics
But creatures who lived and breathed
Brought to life again
Through the imagination.
Are they were?
Or were they are?
Recreating flesh on bone
We construct not the creature
But a statue
Or a sketch
An animation of life perceived
In which to mirror fantasy.
For the creature
Is more than artefact
A shell is just a shell
What is past
Is not now
What was then
Was then.
Now it is shell, a bone, a shank of hair
And so has come to mean
Nothing more than spirits
Simply ghosts
Whose form perceived
Makes us wonder all the more
Of this earth
On whose soil we trod
Forever