They used to call him thunder,

tail-swiping cold blooded king of the age,

That was when the world was smaller.

Which roared back when he roared at it.

He remembers being current and in step,

the rules written in footprints he helped make, and understood,

laughter loud, opinions louder,

nothing yet to be cancelled for.

Now he moves more carefully,

a fossil learning to breathe new air.

The ground has shifted yet again,

and the names of things have changed

while his tongue still speaks the old sounds.

He tries to keep up, truly he does,

he practices sentences in his head

like stepping-stones across a river

that keep moving.

But every time he opens his mouth

the room stiffens,

as if he’s destroyed a family heirloom

no one told him was there.

He meant kindness.

He meant to share history.

He meant to say “this is how we survived.”

What comes out sounds like something else entirely.

So conversations pass him by

like bright, fleet footed mammals

chattering in a language of now.

They don’t mean to exclude him,

they’re just running so fast.

And he’s tired of apologising

for bones that grew in a different time, another climate.

At night he remembers the

the days when his voice

fitted the sky it rose into,

when being himself didn’t require footnotes and explanation.

He wonders when truth and wisdom

started sounding like threat.

These days he sits back,

Arms folded, tail tucked in,

a grandadasaur in the corner of the room.

He nods. He listens. He smiles benignly.

Better to watch the world evolve

than risk being the reason it flinches.

And though the silence can be lonely,

it feels safer than extinction, so he

loves quietly albeit distantly.

To remember loudly only in his own head,

and to let the young

believe the future began with them.