Fossils of Fathers

          at the Gray, TN Fossil Site & Museum I wonder how much guess work paleontologists use to resurrect vertebrae from shadow. Or if prehistoric re-creations actually hinge on a childlike imagination, using scales to patch up what’s beyond memory? For to deny a child his ghost sends him seeking. Like when my foster son thought he saw his birth dad from across the exhibit hall, and there was no denying his chase up stairs or into vacant restroom stalls. I remember reading that the excavation site spread across acres and measured one hundred feet in depth— a sinkhole, an absence of stable footing that holds even the tiniest creature that stumbles into its heart. But I saw Dad was all he said, confident as bone. At the sandbox display he sifted my silence, still searching a sure sight. Finding nothing and separate as sand, we filled our seats to watch a demonstration of careful hands fostering fossils through this disconnected period of half-discovered existence— to be labeled and categorized, to wait in vain for the rest of their world to return.