Ray Rasmussen

What If

10,000 years from now someone finds the paw print that my black Labrador just made in the trail's rain-wet ooze? Looking at the four toes and heel pattern, perhaps he'll think dog or wolf.

Will he hear the same rumbling from the nearby freeway, smell the same exhaust fumes, see the same haze filling the morning sky?

Or perhaps a hunter will find the print. At the tribe's gathering, he'll pass around the hardened cast and they'll wonder at the kind of beast it was, for they now hunt only the survivors – small mammals, rabbits and feral cats.

dinosaur museum
a tooth 

larger than my arm

Revision of a haibun published in Modern Haiku.