Legacy of the Ooligarchs

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Its creche was near the inland sea,
on a beach where bison graze,
where honking hadrosaurs roamed free
through late Cretaceous days.

Within its egg the fetus died,
a fossil never born,
and though its parents never cried,
the fossil hunter mourns.

For this was no mere dinosaur
that never cracked its shell,
like nothing that had come before
from heaven or from hell.

Within its hands it holds a sphere
of carbon crystallized,
and mirrored in the surface there
are tiny, tragic eyes.

A laser beam has since revealed
the hologram within,
the image of a world concealed,
remote, and alien.

And smiling with a loving grace
long banished from the earth,
the parents of a gentler race
have finally given birth.

Legacy of the Ooligarchs originally appeared in Figment #15 (Fall 1993).

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