Three

Toby.

He made a giant shrub sculpture: a
                                                 tyrannosaurus!
right at the front yard, next to Sharon’s entrance door,

                         Green, overwhelming,
living a vegetative health.

One day – I went closer

saw two cardinals play

Inside it’s leafy belly.

“Doors are the beginning of everything.
And Cardinals? They will escape faster
than your blink.”

The fossil could be almost talking.

                                        And why wouldn’t it?                                                                                                        The fossil was an inch away from my ears.

I went closer the next day; 

                                                                  close enough

to look for the cardinals once more,

                                                      found no birds in

                                                               the leafy belly that day.

A lizard excavated itself out instead –
a smooth moment, then

It was gone!

Doors are everywhere in that

Dinosaur belly for a lizard.

“Lizards have a genetic memory to escape –
How smoothly they escaped an extinction!”

the fossil seemed to tell
words like the smell of freshly cut grass.
The fossil – smooth

almost like a

charm. You can see swollen lines

And almost see the labyrinths

of cells to support its once inhaling moments.

The wind was smooth on the leaves.

Sharon told Ivy: Toby was turning more
unusual everyday. Time wasn’t

shifting in his head since

he returned from Afghanistan. Toby
was like a pendulum, a tick tock,

back and forth. Time travels over Toby;

His will a pendulum escape?
It was not how he used to be!
He is unusually focused
Around his perfection

as if the tyrannosaur was a world of summer to spring
Toby weathered perfecting his reasons to perfect a shape.

Was he trying to give it a life?
Toby knew words couldn’t

Simplify his explanation.

He tried talking to ghosts instead
staggering memories

limped around his eyes.

Maybe they talked.

Toby talked to invisible Anthony and Zion.

Maybe he saw ghosts

in the shrine of shrub.

Sometimes Toby muttered – he returned to a distant ravine,
Sometimes he was loud – like he was

back in an Afghan landscape,
heard sounds from black eagles circling
around a dead carcass of a donkey.

Working patiently
Weathering like a rock.

Toby digested time.

He could be writing a manual
out of those trimmed branches,

perfecting their outgrowths,

Trimming
the overgrown tail
And so much more!
The shaping was smooth.

Toby explained –

Patiently to all the fossilized faces
stuck in front of his eyes.

“Why would you
walk so far, then get a chance to see a dead
donkey Anthony?”
There was a rustle in the air.
The fossil could be talking again.

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