Scotland

Lashes and lashes of rain
Are pelting the windscreen
Windshield wipers trying their best to catch up
We are on a mission
Dinosaurs were here
On Skye 166 million years ago

Seen
Not by humans

But their footprints
Rediscovered 
20 years ago
By two humans and their dog
Some sort of mutated hairy dinosaur descendant

We stand there
On slippery ground
Soggy feet
Soggy hats
The waterproofed rest withstands the elements

So we stand
Whilst water gently drips off us
Into the 166 million year old footprints
And our minds cannot phantom
That chunk of time
That time line
We can see this point in history right in front of us
Feel the imprint of the toes underneath our fingers
What we cannot see
Is the distance between here and then 

We continue on a cliff-walk
An overly excited father 
Beak full of worms
Tries to distract us from a nest
On the ground
Another dinosaur descendant 
A tiny could-be-dragon
Without fire but feathery wings

Is this where dragon stories come from?
Our–non dinosaur–ancestors finding bones
And skulls with prehistoric sharp edged teeth
Or is it because the hills look like sleeping dragons
Mist gently rising from overgrown nostrils

We walk along the cliff-edge
Basalt columns grumble underneath
They remember the dinosaurs
They have seen it all
Violent heat, emerging, cooling, changing, eroding
They watched
Watched on
And still remember a time when the animals
Whose fins we see emerging from our viewpoint
Looked quite differently indeed
Somehow the dolphins remind me of dinosaurs
Animals in-between
Sharp teeth, hunting, but for strange reasons
Like to play with humans
We watch them jump out of the waves
A waterfall is thundering next to us
Contributing to the decay of the basalt
With destructive powerful beauty

Somewhen in that chunk of time
Between here and then
Humans emerged
And as humans emerged other consciousness found an audience
Bound to place and nature
Essences of entities awakened changed from their slumber
Because humans live through stories
Humans want words that make-things-so 
Words that pack meaning into tiny parcels
Which they string into necklaces of being

So the beings awakened into a consciousness 
That limited them to the words and stories of humans
They knew they were more than that
The humans felt they were more than that
And so humans created rituals to grasp what their stories could not
And they left the places of these ancient beings marked 
To remember that there are stories that cannot be told
But humans like the basalt have changed
Keen edges softened
Ancient stories retold shifted and morphed 
Becoming echoes of their own memories
And with the stories the ancient beings too faded back into the landscape

However

Some rituals remained because they hold more than the stories could
So the fairy glen holds an infinity circle
A fairy hill has trees with colorful ribbons and gifts
Fires are lid on the longest night and the longest day
And when the sun dies and is reborn
The stories have changed
Yet
Yet
Yet our rituals hold fast
As we throw a coin in a well
And bind a bright ribbon on a tree
They know
And somewhere deep down we do, too
We hear the echo of stories never told