Poems by Brian Simoneau

The Fossil Record

by Brian Simoneau

From Canary Winter 2020-21

Brian Simoneau and his family live just outside Boston between the Blue Hills and the Neponset River.

Until now I was never one of those kids
obsessed with dinosaurs. Scientists say
we find, with luck, maybe forty percent
of a specimen's bones and reconstruct
the rest. A century of digging, entire
careers of imagining limbs and skin,
diet and teeth, has recreated bone
by resurrected bone an unknown species,
a fearsome aquatic hunter bigger
than T. rex. I say let us all be one
of those kids in paleo-print jammies
who memorize a million made-up names.
Take Saturdays to gaze at skeletons
strung together. Study forest floors for tracks
preserved by ancient mud turned stone.
Every bird on its perch discloses ways
the dinosaurs never left at all, bits
of life even extinction couldn't kill.
The news offers daily apocalypse,
daily strife. So nightly watch the sky
and remember how much rubble there is
to fall from space, its height never fated
to hold. Missiles swivel to face our homes
and glaciers loose a new flood's weight. Against
such days, may we all become dinosaurs.
Let us love the stories our bones will tell.

Previously published in Meridian.