The sky fell on the giants, and in the dust
The mouse and the chicken dreamed a new world.
For this is what survived: the small, the trust-
Fund of the future, the banners furled
So tight they could not be seen—the mammals
In their burrows, the birds in their hidden nests,
The crocodilians in the river's channels,
The turtles in their shells—the guests
Of the Mesozoic who had never been
The hosts, who had lived in the margins
And the nighttime and the in-between
Of the great ones' world—the bargains
Of the small with the world above:
Let me be insignificant, let me be
Beneath your notice, and the covenant of
My smallness will outlast your dynasty.
Mammos—the mouse-sized heir of Cynos,
Of Theraps, of Pelyon, of Synaps,
Of the great synapsid dynasty whose sigh knows
The weight of a hundred and eighty million year lapse
Between the Permian crown and this new day—
Mammos crept from his burrow in the gray
And silent aftermath and looked away
At a world that was entirely his.
His burrow
Had saved him—the underground network
That the cynodont's vigil had built in the narrow
And patient art of digging, the earthwork
Of a hundred million years of being small—
The burrow was bomb-shelter, pantry, nursery,
And the mammal who survived the fireball
Emerged from the most ancient surgery
Of the earth: the cutting-away of the great
To make room for the small to become great.
And the chicken—if we may call her that:
The bird, the avian dinosaur, the one
Branch of Deinos' tree that did not fall flat
In the impact winter—the dinosaur's own son
Who inherited the sky.
Why did the birds survive
When every other dinosaur did not?
The seed. The tiny, hard-shelled, alive-
Through-winter seed of Angios that was not
Destroyed by the firestorm—the seed that lay
In the soil, dormant, through the impact winter,
And germinated when the first thin ray
Of sunlight returned—the seed was the splinter
Of life that kept the bird alive: the finch
And the sparrow and the ancestral chicken
Ate seeds through the darkness, inch by inch
Of the long winter—while the stricken
And enormous dinosaurs, who needed tons
Of fresh green matter every day,
Found nothing—and the smaller ones
Who ate the seeds found the only way
Through the dark.
The bird was the dinosaur
Who flew and ate seeds—that combination,
That seemingly humble inventory's store,
Was the ark that carried the entire nation
Of the dinosaurs across the flood
Of the impact winter—and every bird
That sings today is the living blood
Of Deinos' house, the final word
Of the dinosaur that was never final:
For the birds are dinosaurs, and the morning song
Of the robin is the Mesozoic's spinal
And continuing declaration: I belong
To the lineage that walked the Cretaceous plain,
And though the giants fell, I fly,
And in my bones the hollow architecture's grain
Of Archon's house still reaches for the sky.
And the crocodile—Cruros' last survivor,
The river-dwelling remnant of the elder
Brother's line—the ultimate reviver
Of the archosaur's ancient welter—
He survived as he had survived the end
Of the Triassic: by being small, amphibious,
And cold-blooded enough to extend
His fasting through the dark—the ambiguous
And patient crocodile who could slow
His metabolism to almost nothing
And wait—a year, if needed—for the flow
Of the river to bring the food—the clothing
Of patience wrapped around the crocodile's
Ancient body, the survival strategy
That had worked before and worked for miles
Of geological time—the strategy
Of doing nothing, slowly, very well.
And Turtlos—the patient one, Paraps' child,
Who carried his house through every hell
The earth could make—the turtle's mild
And unbothered persistence through the fire
And the dark and the cold and the starvation—
For the turtle asks so little to acquire
Another day, another generation:
A little warmth, a little water, a leaf,
An insect, and the patience of the stone
That the turtle seems to be—the brief
And fiery catastrophe could not dethrone
The creature who was already armored
Against the ordinary cruelties of the world.
So the synapsids returned. The sun-warmed
And milk-giving and furry, the unfurled
And long-delayed inheritors of the earth—
Mammos walked into the Paleocene's
Empty world and found it full of berth
For everything the mammal's body means:
Into every niche the dinosaurs had held,
The mammals radiated—small at first,
Then larger, then enormous—and they spelled
The future in the milk with which they nursed
Their young, and the fur that kept them warm,
And the three ear-bones that heard the world
In frequencies the reptiles never formed—
And the synapsid banner was unfurled
Again, after a hundred and eighty million years
Of the nighttime vigil—Synaps' house
Reclaimed the daylight world, and the tears
Of the exile ended, and the mouse
Became the elephant, the whale, the ape—
And in the fullness of the mammal's time
A creature would arise whose escape
From the animal's silence would sublime
Into language, and consciousness, and art,
And would look back at the fossil record's page
And read the story from the very start—
And understand.
But that is another age.
For now, honor the mouse and the chicken—
The two survivors of the Mesozoic's end,
The small and the humble and the stricken
Who inherited the earth—and who will tend
The future of the living world from here:
The mammal from the burrow, the bird from the nest,
The crocodile from the river, the tortoise without fear—
The meek, the small, the patient, and the blessed.
This is the Easter of the Mesozoic:
The death that is the door to the age of mind,
The extinction that was not the final stoic
Conclusion but the opening—and behind
The falling stone, the rising of the form
That would one day look up at the stars and know
That it was looking—and through the storm
Of the cosmic visitor's leveling blow,
The future of consciousness was born
In the dust of the Mesozoic's last good night—
And morning came, and the world was torn
And silent—and the mouse stepped into the light.