Smokingboot

happened to me somewhere in Arizona, I think. We were supposed to be on our way to Vegas, and instead found ourselves facing the foothills of Utah. In the sunset they turned bright pink, like strawberry meringues floating a few feet above the desert's edge. I wondered if they were hills at all, and suspected they might be clouds, but they didn't move. By day they were the same colour as the rest of the ordinary world, baked red and cracking.

At one point we saw a man by the side of the road with a bucket of water. He just stood there. I was curious, so we stopped the car, and I asked him what he was doing. He told me that for a few dollars he would show us dinosaur tracks, so we paid him...I think it was 5 maybe 7 dollars. And he threw water on the ground, smearing it over the rocks as far as he could. There were the footprints, bi-pedal, three-clawed I think, running, running. Close behind it he pointed out the steps of something much bigger; huge, broad tracks that kept on going past the water's definition, past the point where the runner's tracks abruptly stopped. The water dried quickly.

It has only just occurred to me that I saw this, one of the oldest stories in the world, older than letters and words. So far I have singularly failed to turn it into a poem. But it is, at least recorded somewhere other than on lost rocks and forgotten earth. The man himself lived on the reservation nearby, a much younger story, though extinction still plays a part in it.

Me, I just passed, and saw it, and was gone.