Hobble Creek Review
| Matt Mason |
At the Fossil Beds
You want Sophia to be more excited. She loves
books about fossils, dinosaur and mammoth movies.
Here,
it’s all practical:
a year’s work
with a watercolor paintbrush
is a couple bones
stuck in white stone.
You know better than to complain
or badger (or oreodon or horned rodent) her,
you show skill in your restraint,
hike the trail down the embankment.
She will be thrilled to see cactus,
to catch a small toad who fails to blend in.
She will name it Tontsy, pet it, let it go in the tall grass.
On the drive home, she will see the park
in a small town, it has crossed seesaws,
a roundabout made of circled benches, things
you’ve never seen in the red and blue plastic
of Omaha parks. You’ll pull over under a shade tree,
work the seesaw,
push her on the swings; your hand
lightly brushing
this girl
whose shape forms
up
into
the world.
You want Sophia to be more excited. She loves
books about fossils, dinosaur and mammoth movies.
Here,
it’s all practical:
a year’s work
with a watercolor paintbrush
is a couple bones
stuck in white stone.
You know better than to complain
or badger (or oreodon or horned rodent) her,
you show skill in your restraint,
hike the trail down the embankment.
She will be thrilled to see cactus,
to catch a small toad who fails to blend in.
She will name it Tontsy, pet it, let it go in the tall grass.
On the drive home, she will see the park
in a small town, it has crossed seesaws,
a roundabout made of circled benches, things
you’ve never seen in the red and blue plastic
of Omaha parks. You’ll pull over under a shade tree,
work the seesaw,
push her on the swings; your hand
lightly brushing
this girl
whose shape forms
up
into
the world.
Matt Mason has won 2 Nebraska Book Awards (for Poetry in 2007
and Anthology in 2006). He is Executive Director of the Nebraska
Writers Collective, board president of the Nebraska Center for the
Book, and has served as the Nebraska State Coordinator for Poetry
Out Loud, a Poetry Foundation/NEA program. In addition to nine
chapbooks, Matt's first full length collection, Things We Don't Know
We Don't Know, was released from Backwaters Press in 2006.
and Anthology in 2006). He is Executive Director of the Nebraska
Writers Collective, board president of the Nebraska Center for the
Book, and has served as the Nebraska State Coordinator for Poetry
Out Loud, a Poetry Foundation/NEA program. In addition to nine
chapbooks, Matt's first full length collection, Things We Don't Know
We Don't Know, was released from Backwaters Press in 2006.
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