It’s hard not to notice the resemblance
of pterodactyls and dragons,
even though you know the humans weren’t around.
Not even the proto-monkeys were around
or whatever it was that turned into proto-monkeys.
The world was awful then, the flora & fauna struggling
to figure out who to eat and who to feed.

DNA tests on hair samples collected in Nepal reveal
a primate species unrecorded so far,
and unmanipulated photos offer up
the footprints of an upright-walking mammal
of great size.

Atlantis has been found by deep ground radar,
a ringed city in mud flats, 60 miles inland
from the sea that rose to drown it,
close to where Plato said,
surrounded by “memorial” cities in a wide radius,
built, archaelogists believe, by survivors of the tsunami.

Monsters under beds: true.
Skeletons in closets: true.
Ents: True, too. Trees speak, though
slow enough it takes years to make a record of
a single back-and-forth from tree to tree.
Gaia: the planet behaves like a cornered animal.

And the Yeti play hide-and-seek, or hide-and-hide.
Not everything wants to be known.