I think autumn is the best season to paint dinosaurs

because an English October is lizard-coloured –

my terrible reptiles are shades of failing light and damp leaves –

at this time of year, amongst the quietus and murk,

it would not be remarkable to meet a monster.

 

I have picked beech nut for the Dicynodon’s dragging belly,

remember conkers on the ground, implausibly bright in the mud

and recreate that glint on its beak and think I hear a cracking...

Later, dulled and dry, it is quiet.

 

The long back of Megalosaurus is shades of lichen – 

I stroke out its mackerel stripes with a grey-green silt,

a forest pond at the end of the day.

I dab on his carnivorous eyes – 

use the bitter orange resin from a rent in cherry bark.

That night I dream of bone-coloured teeth bared at my window.

 

I decide on the sky after sleet for the wings of a Pterodactylus,

souse my brush in hoary ink,

a pallid mushroom-gill-grey for its body – 

keeping it light enough for lifting off the page.

 

In autumn, I try to draw the fearfully great dragons back

and as the year extinguishes,

this gives me life.