Inner Space

a guide aims her flashlight
at the borehole drilled
half a century before

the build of I-35, below
ground it’s twenty degrees cooler
than the blazing temps out there

the cavern where my Texan mate
takes me to find relief from heat, beneath
a canopy of soda straw stalactites

the Permian floodwater
maze that claimed the lives
of Ice Age species, mammoth

armadillo and sabre-toothed cat,
swamped in quicksand,
a pyramid of bat guano piled high

on the grotto floor, past the talus
cone of bone sink I spot
a crumbling tusk

wall murals of camel and horse
depict a different history
than the one I knew

growing up, Cabazon dinos
the novelty architectures of my youth
that call me home,

rising over desert hills,
the concrete Apatosaurus
reclaimed by Creationists

selling toy replicas their labels
warn, “The fossil record does
not support evolution."