Extinction: Fossils of A Vanished Future

—By Steven Wade Veatch

They ruled the world once,
lumbering giants beneath a fiery sun,
that trampled ferns 
with their colossal strides.

No one mourned their passage:
A death simply by a massive rock and chance.
As the world burned, the sky turned to ash.
Next the Earth froze.
What remained was cold silence;
the stillness of a kingdom gone.

Now we walk on this earth, 
masters of fire and thought,
builders of cities that stretch to the sky—
where we weave our dreams into metal and glass.
But listen closely—the oceans rise 
like ancient prophets while nature
whispers warnings.

We are the asteroid now, 
the architects of our own destruction. 
Not by fire from the sky, 
but by the slow smothering of our planet.

Will we fall as the dinosaurs did, 
victims of a fate we cannot outrun?
Or will we rise, learning from the bones of beasts
and the spotlight of our science?

The dinosaurs left no poets, 
no songs, no warnings carved on stone.
When we vanish will there be silence once more?
Or will the Earth find a new voice,
one that hums with life that does not know us,
does not need us, and does not contemplate
what we could have been?

The final moments of a T. rex during the start of the
Cretaceous extinction. Image by the author using
AI.

Clovis Once Upon the Land

Day dawns
Morning brings
An Ice Age breeze

Glaciers retreat
Pathways open
To an ice-free corridor

Distant ice 
Endless views
Earth beneath the sky

Early migrants
Ancient hunters
Spread across the land

Mysterious Clovis
Journey far
Intrepid people

Spreading east
Some go south
Prospering across the land

Mother mammoth
Baby follows
Herds upon the meadow

Mammoths graze
Others drink
Soon to drift away

Distinctive points
Superior work
Made of jasper or of chert

Quartzite cores
Chipping blanks
Make deadly edges 

Quiet stalking
Lethal spear
Hunters make their play

Thrusting spear
Penetrating power
Delivers lethal blow

Scraping hides
Roasting meat
Over glowing embers 

Thankful hunters
Ritual offerings
A shaman dances

Itinerant camps
Family clans
Move across the land

Centuries pass
Clovis vanish
No longer anywhere

Working trowel
Sifting tray
Excavate a buried site 

Material remains
Revealing secrets
To learn about their ways

The Keeper of Tales

Grandfather's stories, 
covered with the dust of old Colorado,
come alive in the places between words,
where the mines whispered about gold,
and the mountains echoed adventure.

He talked about the West,
where the sun bled into the earth,
each tale a reminder of the grit and the gold
that ran through the veins of the land.
And of men with rough hands and weary backs
who chased dreams buried deep in unforgiving rocks.

His words created such a vivid scene—
miners’ lamps twinkling like distant stars, 
their light dancing on mine walls 
as picks clanged into ore.
I listened, breathless and wide-eyed.

Now, his voice lingers
in the spaces of my mind,
like the shadows of the majestic mountains,
guiding me through the rough 
and winding paths of my thoughts.

Grandfather, the storyteller 
still speaks, and I still listen—
each word echoing in my memory 
like the fall of a pebble in a well,
each story a stone
in the path I walk today.

—Steven Wade Veatch

A Communion of Discovery

Dedicated to Estella Leopold, conservationist.*

Melting ice washed gravels down,
burying the mammoth—hiding it through the ages.
And I found a rock at its grave, 
with secrets deep inside.
I broke it, crushed it, sifted it;
dissolved it in a beaker, 
spun it by a centrifuge, 
and peeled back layers of time.

Now only hidden fossils remain:
Pollen grains and mossy spores—
once floating on an Ice Age breeze.

Now in that communion of discovery
these small fossils yield
the deepest glimpse through time
to the world before we came, and warn
of a future we must face—
while just outside forests change, 
species die,
and life recedes.

By Steven Wade Veatch

An imagined scene of the Ice Age mammoth
found at the Florissant Fossil Beds created
by the author using AI.

*Estella Leopold assisted me in the actual paleontological research mentioned in this poem. A sediment layer associated with the burial site of a Columbian Mammoth at the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument was found to contain Ice Age pollen and spores. This research resulted in a paper presented at the Geological Society of America in Denver in 2013. Estella was one of the original “Defenders of Florissant” and was instrumental in the Florissant Fossil Beds in becoming a national monument. Estella is the daughter of Aldo Leopold, who wrote the Sand County Almanac. Estella passed away February 25, 2024. She was 97 years old. 

Note: this poem is an expanded version of an earlier poem by the author entitled "Mammoth." 

A Fossil Haiku

 

Archaeopteryx

A dinosaur with feathers

Transition to flight

Haiku poetry about Archaeopteryx lithographica,
the famous dinosaur with wings and feathers.
Found in the Jurassic Solnhofen Limestone of southern Germany,
Archaeopteryx is a transitional fossil between dinosaurs and birds.
 Watercolor pencil drawing by Steven Wade Veatch.

Selfish Solitude

As I grow older, I reflect on the cost

of selfish actions and what I've lost.

Regret and wisdom entangle in thought—

lessons learned—though dearly bought.

By Steven Wade Veatch

Evening Reflections: Duck Lake

Late in the day the sun sighed.
The lake sparkled as if polished.
The ducks did not notice
a salmon-colored sky as it unfolded—
but a loon did.

As the sun fell from the sky
a fading twilight filled the horizon.
At family gatherings a campfire 
blazed and crackled, 
filling the air with popping 
embers and wisps of smoke.
Dancers arrive in the shadows,
people of the past, 
linking hands, they spin 
to the plaintive fire’s song.
And then they are gone.

Nothing is the same:
the empty swing, 
a broken lawn chair,
the vacant cottage. 

A restless loon flutters, 
its wings beat anxiously,
as it desperately tries to hold 
onto the last remnants 
of the fading day, 
unwilling to succumb 
to the encroaching night.

By Steven Wade Veatch