A Thinking Break

In the middle of ‘productivity’ on a writing retreat, you still need breaks. Your brain needs a breather. A stretch of sorts, just like your muscles and your butt.

My walks around Eureka Springs have been the best of breaks, more than I could have asked for: gentle crisp early spring air, blooming trees and gardens so bright they look painted, and surprises around corners.

That combination stirs the poet in me, and I’ve written several pieces that I am very happy with, between my work sesssions on non-fiction and the prairie project, which is my first goal for this retreat.

Sunday afternoon I walked downtown and back.  A creature I’d not seen before in a garden spot on Spring Street appeared and posed a question for me.  He dared to stretch my mind. Here’s the result:
If They’d Had Lights

If they’d had lights,
they would not be extinct.
I thought so when I saw him,
the stegosaurus made of stone,
bedecked with strands of mini-lights,
a string of large bulbs, smartly laid,
strung where his plates would be.

If they’d had lights,
survival would have been
a matter of the brightest,
the dusty air no sweat for them,
despite the skies made dark and dim
when asteroidal impact made
their forage hard to see.

If they’d had lights,
they still would roam the earth.
I wonder, though, if whether
an allosaur’s electric grin,
a flashy T-rex, or his kin
might blinking, blind us, and between
their teeth, extinct, we’d be.

© 2016, Damon Dean