Near-Earth Objects

After the story broke of the girl who found part of a dinosaur
in the dirt at her sister’s ball game, no parent
could say stop digging.
All their own childhood dreams of lost doubloons or rubies
came back to find them. It became rare
not to see people pushing around the earth in their free time
on the sides of parking lots or in lines, waiting.
No one else found anything.
Under the lakes, they caught sight of railroad tracks running
past storm cellars, past foundations of houses
moved when the generation before them had flooded the valleys,
past houses left behind to the water.
By then, they learned they’d been told the wrong color
for dinosaurs, the creatures assumed green and brown
like lizards until someone realized
they’d been bright as birds, maybe even brighter.
Why not when they had no need
of hiding? The girl kept the fossil on her dresser
to remember her turn
at being lucky, that coming once
in a lifetime her parents warned her,
not to be mean, but realistic. Her sister
touched it when no one was looking,
end to end, a rod, a scepter.
Above them, another asteroid
approached closely.