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?