Under the medical lights of the Ice Age Exhibit
the mastadon looked like a wrecked ship.
Saturdays I stood with my brother
on the tundra
watching children put their hands through the ropes
to touch the remains of the hyena,
the rusted bird with one egg
and the mural of glaciers, blue and stopped.
We'd done the dinosaurs: Brontosaurus
in the drowsy swamp
sucking the dripping weed from his lip—
30 tons of ignorance—
and grinning Allosaurus with his limp claws raised;
neither would outlast the other,
the paragraph explained, only the dreamy
insect in the fern would survive
and the names I memorized:
“Thunder Lizard,” “Three Horn Face,”
“the Double Beamed”—words
like dinosaurs themselves, crouching
in their increments on the Time Line.
I watched my brother through a skeleton,
getting bored,
wanting to go on to the airplanes.
The mastadon watched too, propped
on his chrome crutches, his gondola
tusks tipped back the way they found him
in Siberia, just having eaten.
I recall a swelling arrow pointing
to a map of nothing, bones
in slings of wires,
the shaking walls that kept us from the Bronze Age,
and off to the right, in a shallow stall,
a wax man being buried
among furs and leaves
with paintings of fat bison above him
and faces of other Neanderthals, weeping.
Evolution: Bones of a Poem: 1983-2013
2013 version:
Ice age
mastodon
tundra
children put
of the hyena
rusted egg
blue
drowsy
dripping weed
outlast
the paragraph
and the names
“the Double Beamed”— words
dinosaurs
increments
my brother
getting bored
mastodon
chrome crutches gondola
tusks
swelling
bones
wax man buried
furs and leaves
Neanderthals, weeping