Haiku is the Achilles heel of haibun,  so comments on the haiku and prose is always appreciated.

What if ...

100,000 years from now, a paleontologist finds the hardened paw print my black lab just made in the trail's soupy mud, and looking at the four toes and heel pattern, says to himself, 'dog' or 'wolf'. And, a cast of the print goes on a wall in a museum somewhere, and school children come and look and try to imagine the great beast that made the print.

Will they imagine this grassy hillside, hear the grumbling roar, not of beast, but of machines passing nearby, will they smell the exhaust fumes, see the yellow haze filling the sky, sense the weight of impending disaster?

Perhaps, it won't be a paleontologist, but a hunter, who finds the print in hardened mud and takes it back to his dwelling. He passes it around at his tribe's fire circle and together they wonder what kind of beast it was, for he hunts only small mammals, mice and voles and rats.

dinosaur museum
a tooth
larger than my arm

Comments

[Robert]

I enjoyed this.