I am the one whose bones they haven’t dug,
part of an unseen clock
keeping the Earth’s deep time, in silence, snug,
folded into blankets of rock.
I am the one whose booming roar was loud
as a forest thick with rooks
when the trees rouse them into a storm cloud
shutting the sun’s book.
I am the one whose crushed-gold eyes were bright
as an eagle clutching a fish,
Blake’s tiger burning, burning through the night
like a birthday wish.
I am the one so perfectly preserved
I’m real as dreams, the dinosaur
whose footprints, the prints of a gigantic bird,
halt, outside your door.
Mark Granier is an Irish poet and photographer/filmmaker. His poems have appeared in many outlets in Ireland and the UK over the years, including the New Statesman, the TLS, The Poetry Review and Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘WRITE Where We Are NOW’ pandemic project/archive. His children’s poems have been published in a number of anthologies, including Something Beginning With P (O’Brien Press, 2004) and Once Upon A Place (Little Island, 2015). His fifth collection, Ghostlight: New & Selected Poems, was published by Salmon Poetry in May 2017.