Dad. Look at this!
A stone
Glides from your hand.
It’s “interesting.”
You point.
It’s a shell, petrified.
Pleistocene era.
It belongs in my collection.”
In your room.
In Dresser Drawers,
Cabinets. Plastic Bins.
Paper cups. Drinking glasses.
Salad Bowls.
Meals for a Hungry
Stone Eater. Fossils.
Your principal sees you
Sifting the
Rock mulch.
Tree lawns and buildings
You have created
A special
Hunting Ground
Fossils.
Frustrated
I explain
Rocks are everywhere
Just elements
Our environment
Encases us,
Suffocates us
With fossils
You reject this
Each past life
Entombed forever
Is special
Drawn into your world
During anxious moments
Before school
After lunch
As other students
Clear the halls.
It’s safe to stare at fossils
Beneath the principal’s
Windows, then pocket
Just a few.
I wonder if the five tons
You have stashed away
In your room.
Will come crashing
To the floor below.
Principal says he’s
Waiting until you graduate.
To replace them.
He has befriended you
But you don’t know his name.
One of the rare ones
Who try to understand.
You share your
Treasures with him.
He Feels joy
that sometimes
You share your world.
Knowing it’s a rare thing
Just as sometimes
You let me in.
Are we fossils too?
To be a fossil
In your world
Is, after all,
Special
From: A Father’s Songs to His Autistic Son – 7
Weasel Creek 
Posted on February 16, 2011