A Pterodactyl Haunting! * by Jennie Hart

I woke in a stupor

My feelings were weird

I had gone to bed sleepy

Was the wine I declared

I had been in the bar

With a friend till quite late

Just a colleague from work

It wasn’t a date

I didn’t drink much

Only one glass or two

No reason for feeling

The way that I do

I sensed that a nightmare

Had caused me to wake

I was back in the Pleistocene Times

For goodness sake!

I felt I was flying

In some sort of form

Not a hawk or an owl

Swooping down for a worm

No! A huge pterodactyl

With fine scaly skin

That was me, waking up

In the bed I was in

I felt my arms flapping

Like wings on the bed

I flew to the mirror

And it has to be said

I looked very strange

Not ugly not elegant

Just a plain pterodactyl

Not a horse or an elephant

So lessons are learned

No wine before bed

Then you’ll sleep like an angel

Not a pterodactyl instead! 

*This was a warm-up activity in 2022 - A Word Maze. 

Between us, we chose 8 random words and inserted them into a story, poem or prose,

written spontaneously in 10-15 minutes

These were our chosen words:

stupor, weird, sleepy, elegant, bar, sign, wine, pterodactyl