these also once under moonlight

.

A snake

with two small hind-limbs

and pelvic girdle.

Large-headed dinosaurs

hunting in packs like dogs.

Others whose scaly plates

thistle to feathers.

Mammals sleekening, ottering,

simplified

back toward the waters.

Ours, too, a transitional species,

chimerical, passing,

what is later, always, called monstrous -

no longer one thing, not yet another.

Fossils greeting fossils,

fearful, hopeful.

Walking, sleeping, waking, wanting to live.

Nuzzling our young wildly, as they did.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief