Petrified - Pere Ubu

Not so many thousand years before

These old rocks were the bones of the haplocanthosaur

Old old rocks

Tall as a house

Might’ve been gentle as a mouse

Bare bones are petrified

Later they are classified

A skeleton may indicate but imagination animates

The mind’s eye does need to see

The fluid grace and subtlety

Animals fitted perfectly to a world not like the one we see

The bones of a flying animal now called the pterosaur

Have been found a hundred miles from the presumed seashore

Old old rocks

One kind had teeth like a whale

One kind had a hair covering

One kind would’ve been 37 feet wing to wing

Bare bones are petrified

Later they are classified

A skeleton may indicate but imagination animates

The mind’s eye does need to see

The fluid grace and subtlety

Animals fitted perfectly to a world not like the one we see

Here’s the sort of bird that we don’t see

In some of the books it’s not treated quite respectfully

Old old rocks

Has the short end of the stick

Been given archaeopteryx?