Excavation of a Young T. Rex

The king dies with the child

when the fearsome T. Rex

becomes a cultivated chicken,

a plush to hold when

boy and family dog cower

from lightning and thunder

and the blows of life.

–

Beyond the fear is science,

the dive into bones, dusty history,

to determine whether

this fossilized thigh

was mommy’s and daddy’s love

or their absolute hate—

what was the big hurt that killed it,

settled its pain in layers of stone.

–

The first hurt found was Sue,

the second Scotty.

–

How old were they—

it’s is hard to date death

when 90% of it’s dust.

–

It’s easy to determine

when muscle attached

to bone in womb

but harder to know

when, how and why

it detached.

–

There is no science

for the study of lost dust.

–

A fossilized T. Rex

doesn’t care if it

once had a bite strength

near 7,800 pounds, enough

to cleave sinew from skeleton,

that coprolites show

it had juices to

stomach and digest

all the blows and pain.

–

It doesn’t matter

if it could put on

five pounds of

muscle mass a day

if it never gets to its teens—

or whether it would

have evolved into

a vulture or a hawk,

or could have run faster

when it was full grown,

or that its bigger brain

made it more intelligent,

and its senses more acute.

–

The young slaughtered T. Rex,

can only die in the mud and disappear,

until a paleontologist who

had a better life, discovers him

and begins the excavation.