Beneath a twilight sky
We’re passing by
Barringer crater, Winslow.
At the wheel, chewing a gum,
His eyes straight ahead
Frank rocks his head to the music loud.
“Frank,” I ask, “what if this moment
a meteor strikes right here,
right before our eyes
making humans and every other
extinct for a long time over.
Then a million years later
homo re-sapiens re-evolve
into a species smarter;
and science now is more potent
and paleontologists can carbon-date
fossils to the exact moment
of the specimen’s demise,
Paleonuerologists poking through
brain fossils will detect
the last thoughts – precise -
that ran through the gray cells when they died.”
“Wouldn’t it be neat,” I persist,
“if a paleontologist PYT then passing by
finds my skull and traces this thought
in my head right now -
the moment before the earth is about to crash -
dreaming of her browsing through my mind
even though I’m an evolution cycle behind?”
Frank, his eyes still looking ahead
his foot holding steady on the gas pedal,
holds his face without a twitch
“Let me tell you, what’ll happen,” he says.
“That meteor will rip your brain
off your skull
and shoot it right
up and high.
And do you see ‘em over there?” he asks
pointing to the horses on the ranch nearby.
“There your brain will land,
plunging deep
into the asshole of that one over there;
and in its ass,
for an eternity your brain will stay
until your dead-bones chick- what’s her name?-
Miss. Jane Fossil finds her way,
to the horse’s remains a gazillion years later.
Peeking into her microscope she’ll proclaim –
that a horse was the smartest that walked the earth
with brains at either end,
and though the species survived on grass
it could generate whacky ideas
right out of its ass.”
