Out of Date

Out of Date

1720 and it’s the 13^th of June and the first Duke has earned his ermine.

Previous Earls, Barons and a Marquess or two glance down upon the vermin.

A spirited Celt, a Saxon Fair and some Romans who landed at Poole harbour

Are looking on and looking down, sighing in the shady arbour.

Alas, alack their reign was short and gone they were in a blink

Like fellow Pliosaurs from Weymouth Bay, the line became extinct.

From 155 million years ago or in 1843 in verdant Dorset they briefly did flourish

Families of dusty dinosaurs or progenitors the lovely county did nourish.

An asteroid hit or reptiles caught cold, a peer dies without his wish,

It is hard to chart events that might have snuffed out gentry or fish

Anachronisms now that once were fashionable wave ‘au revoir’

To a glorious family motto ‘Either never attempt, or accomplish’.

A family motto, the simple maxim they lived by

and both dinosaur and man join the extinct Dorset Society Alumni.


By Linda Prince
 

T-Rex

T-Rex

As old as the hills, Jurassic in fact.

A star of stage and screen.

The tyrant lizard from the reptile age,

Extinct but no has-been.

I can beat a sprinter, with Olympian thighs.

The largest land carnivore of all time,

With terrible teeth to tear you apart

As you fight to escape your primeval slime.

Mock the length of my arms, the size of my skull,

how long to change direction,

but I’ll break off your limbs and bite off your head

and then we’ll discuss natural selection.

Call us Sue or call us Stan, don’t think that you can mock us

I see you quaking with my binocular vision.

The name is T-Rex and I smell you and your fear

You can’t beat me only using derision.

I will crush your will, make your heart rate soar

As I thunder up, hover over you in the famous stoop.

There is no escape from a mouth agape

So go back to your primordial soup.

And leave the powerful to roam the imagination

And pay the king of the dinosaur age due respects.

Most feared. Most revered. Oppressive and cruel

But none more famous than T-Rex.

By Linda Prince