.
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
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