Extinction

After a managed care company

calls me to be “a prescriber,”

I recall The Book of Dinosaurs

my grandfather gave me the day

I turned seven. One hundred million

years passed with the turn of a page,

T. Rex ruling, then suddenly extinct,

the world growing colder and colder

until the final painting of an Ice Age

night, a saber-tooth tiger roaring

from a cliff, our troglodyte ancestors

in a field below, clubbing

each other to death, battling

for power and turf, me in my office

waging my own little war, wondering

what on earth is worth dying for.