dinosaurs roamed
in Cimarron County.
Bones
showing
in the green shale,
ribs the size of plow blades,
hip bones like crank phones,
and legs running
like fence rails
down to a giant
foot.
A chill shoots up my spine
imagining a dinosaur
slogging out of an Oklahoma sea,
with turtles swimming around its legs.
I can see it sunning itself on the swampy banks,
beyond it a forest of ferns.
It’s almost easy to imagine,
gazing out from our house
at the dust-crushed fields,
easy to imagine filling in all the emptiness with green,
easy to imagine such a beast
brushing an itchy rump against our barn.
But all that remains of it
broken and turned to stone,
trapped in the hillside,
this once-upon-a-time real-live dinosaur
who lived,
and fed,
and roamed
like a ridiculous
long-necked cow,
and then fell down and died.
I think for a moment of Joe De La Flor
herding brontosaurus instead of cattle
and I
smile.
I tell my father,
Let’s go to the site
and watch the men chip away with ice picks,
let’s see how they plaster the bones.
Please, before they ship the whole thing to Norman.
I am thinking
that a dinosaur is getting out of Joyce City
a hundred million years too late to
appreciate the trip,
and that I ought to get out before my own
bones turn to stone.
But I keep my thoughts to myself.
My father thinks awhile,
rubbing that spot on his neck.
He looks out the window,
out across the field,
toward the knoll where Ma and the baby lie.
“It’s best to let the dead rest,” he says.
And we stay home.
June 1935