14/30

Adam names the dinosaurs

The first were easy, called by their bodies:

Long-arm, Heavy one, Bird-hip. As if

he were naming them unguided. The trouble

arrived because the man could see

the fearful names they would become:

Deceiver, Quick-to-seize-prey, Unmarried one,

Terrible king. To know by the name

of a doomed thing the certain and possible:

Of death and its purpose. Of being alone.

That a king could be less 

than perfect, and a man mistaken, or lying--the two

almost the same in that undamaged place.