dinosaurs on first street

would it have been safer
to keep on walking
to ignore that
next to the construction site
with its cranes
and its promise
of incongruous high-rise buildings
looking down
on the derelict memory
of empire
on this street
dividing the old 
and the new
there
on the pavement
dinosaurs

Written on 17 June 2022. Inspired by a find on First Street, in Manchester, after dinner at HOME Mcr, after the opening of a two-day workshop and conference on Transnational Lived Citizenship Through Creative Production which took place on the 16th and 17th of June at the University of Manchester.