What about the Dinosaurs?

My father died last year. This poem was something I wrote when he was very much alive, about 20 years ago. I like reading it out loud better than in my head because it carries more weight aloud. My relationship with this man was never easy, but when all is said and done, I think he actually loved me as much as he could. I guess that’s something… anyway, here it is:

A fountain of words rise from my stomach

spewing onto the table

covering its surface

soaking into the grain of the wood

the volume is turned up

I can hear

though he doesn’t speak

he brings out his book

Everything

he says

Is in this book, Everything

but,

I mumble

what about the…

This is how IT began

This is the Word, the Truth

Mom bustles about the warm kitchen

mumbles, now Ed listen to the girl

I watch her back hunched over the sink

not knowing whether to continue

but I do

Tradition, I argue, is OK,

but it is not science.

He vomits his disgust.

What have you become?

I regress a year for every moment

in the ensuing silence

mumbling in one last feeble second

the moment before reentering my mother’s womb

but,

what about the dinosaurs?