In my grandmother’s day, their leathery wings block out the sky.
Draping darkness over her village, lithospheric claws rake into thatched roofs.
Eyes closed, knit beside her mother,
She sleeps and she remembers the feeling of gliding with each silent flap.

In my mother’s day, sailors warn of fiery beams that strike trespassing ships from above.
A lattice of breeding grounds at the seams of the earth burn full fleets into the water.
Spices and tea leaves flood the shores,
Her throat runs hot as she dreams echoes of her father’s soggy screams.

In my day— and that was several days ago now— there are stories of an aortic valve—
big enough to pass through on foot, that gives the eater everlasting life.
Left bleeding by would-be eternal pioneers— eggs break fast to dry teets,
Nests dwindle and immortals die;
Nights, I remember how to crack and push towards light, my milk tooth sore from first use.

The stories are changing now,
surrounded by guards and poachers. They take place
in forgotten caves and expensive facilities. Threads of evolution woven
underground and mounted behind glass.

In your mother’s day, a single scale, ground up, darkens market stalls with promises of vitality and hubris.
Keratinous dipped nickel borne of the planetary core, binds together conquest with forgotten fear.
Silvery cream adorns her eyebags, paralyzed,
Hallucinations of her ossified granite frame crush down while she sleeps.

In your day, the liquid iron that pumps through their hearts solidifies in captivity.
A patchwork of managed caves stipple Earth’s surface, their basalt cooling from disuse. Fragments
of landscape craft a spectrogram of legacy, historic homes lost to tides, power, and time.
Between your mother’s care and
your daughter’s needs, the creature is forgotten. When you sleep, you do not dream.

In your daughter’s day, the remains of the creature are extracted and refined into ancestral chains,
Preserved in solitude, politicized as a token of our own mortality.
The predator’s final humiliation.
Awoken by cries she cannot place, your daughter no longer sleeps.

In your granddaughter’s day, they talk of Anolis eggs, enlarged and injected with
the cryogenic descendants of myth. We are all creators now,
hatching eukaryotic resurrection.
We wade backwards with hope,
and dream restlessly of the past.