This Too

This Too

The forsaken dinosaur
on the subway track
is a promise
that at one point 
– in the past –
a child was crying
(and that there were dinosaurs)

Because life is very painful sometimes
and the green plastic dinosaur
was not simply lost forever
but lying
right there
in mocking eyesight

“Let me get it!”
The child must have said
through desperate tears
to some harried adult
who clenched the wriggling arm
perhaps too tightly
“Pleeeeeeeeeeease.”

But no 
some suffering must simply be born as 
with a horn
the subway barreled in
enclosing the dinosaur
in a steel coffin
A blessed act of finality 
on the subway’s part
God giveth
and God taketh away

The child (probably) 
lived to see another day
but dinosaurs have been extinct
for millennia