Captured in crystal, dust, and stone,

the creatures of the past caught my attention.

Impossibly complex and cunning,

their world consisted of forests without end

perforated only by volcanoes 

and curtains of meteors 

further mixing up the soup of the past. 

This vibrant illuminated text

leaches not the toxic nostalgia

of an era long gone and long missed,

whose beauty belies danger

because that was the only truth

allowed to be told then.

No, that past was the future 

I wanted to see

beyond every horizon

and across every world

that those above told us 

we’d explore 

when we were older.

I stared at fossils and illustrations

of long-dead denizens for years

only to grow up in a world

where the fossils fight back,

and they do so with much less beauty

than an ambling archaeopteryx might manage.

These fossils still poison us

to move us towards their forward, 

yet time only moves in circles

for those without a future.