Leviathan’s Farewell
(For Dreamers Everywhere)

As Dinsdale stood upon the windy shore
A ripple on the water caught his eye,
The thing that would haunt him forevermore
Was cruising ’neath the bleak November sky.

An old man now, he’d sought it for decades,
With cameras and with sonar from his youth,
Yet always it had managed to evade
The close-ups that would give him final proof.

He craned his neck, stared out across the mere,
He hardly dared believe what he could see,
For high up in the water, crystal clear,
The Saurian was gliding hauntingly.

That fate could be so cruel he nearly wept,
That this day when he’d only thought to come
On his retirement, pay his last respects
To this great Loch, he was the while struck dumb.

These years of searching for the evidence,
Of scorn and ridicule by men of science,
Yet through it all he’d not lost confidence,
And always shown his contempt and defiance.

Now here he stood, alone, with no one near,
Just man and monster in the wilderness,
No camera, (dare he hope it would appear?),
And in his heart he felt great bitterness.

The Saurian sailed close to where he stood,
And as it raised its head, it seemed to smile
Almost as if the creature understood,
And tortured its would-be captor awhile.

Then suddenly there echoed a hoarse cry,
It plunged beneath the surface and was gone,
A tear fell slowly from Tim Dinsdale’s eye:
The memory would linger on and on.

When finally the waters ceased to move,
Dinsdale turned and walked slowly to his car,
He felt somehow as if he had been used,
The irony hung heavy in the air.

That he, alone and unwitnessed should be
In that position, standing helplessly,
Cameraless under that November sky,
While creatures of a time gone, sail on by.

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