Weekend Poetry: Coelacanth

Coelacanth

So, what's new coelacanth?
What have you done that we can't?
Four hundred million years ago you swam
before dinosaurs walked on land.

You had limbs that would be legs
before reptiles hatched from eggs.
If you had just one free wish
would you be a lobed-fin fish?

Not long ago you were unknown
except from fossils cast in stone.
We thought that you were long extinct,
your portrait drawn in books with ink.

And then on that fateful day
you were caught and put on display
for all the world to see and wonder,
to be dissected and pulled asunder.

There's much that's new since you were born.
Now there're creatures in human form.
I don't know how long they'll last,
but you'll be here when they've passed.

- Craig Gosling