The Delta Sea Poem by Barry Middleton

My father told the story;
before man roamed the hills
edging the Mississippi delta,
the land was a dinosaur home.

The loam from the forest soil
washed into a shallow sea
covering cockle and coquina
with a fertile layer of earth.

The well digger brought up proof,
bleached white by millennia,
minerals sacrificed for farmland,
ancient shells and fossil crabs.

My great uncle sat on a vertebra
from a mineralized sauropod
and later school confirmed,
oh yes, there once was a sea.

And if I needed further proof,
late at night from the ridge road,
the stars reflected in dappled light
upon the fluid city streets below.

Imagining, I could squint my eyes
and travel back through time
to gaze on a cretaceous swamp
where now the man fish sleep.