Mornings before I woke, my father would be up by five,
sitting at the kitchen table, brewing blended coffee,
boiling water, and spreading mustard (or was it mayonnaise?)
on sandwich slices of white bread for a baloney lunch.
 
He would open two paper packets of instant oatmeal,
pour their dried flakes into a bowl dolloped with margarine
and baptize the concoction with boiling water.
 
Every workday for fifteen years, this was his breakfast.
Hollandaise sauce was as likely as holding hands with a hobbit.
Elaborate omelets bursting with ham were rare as Sasquatch sightings.
Lattes were serpentine tales from Scottish lochs.
 
Now, I can’t remember a single conversation
we had before he drove twenty miles to cut cardboard all day.
Maybe he told me tall tales about a boar his grandfather
 
killed with a ball of twine, a duck whistle, and a bottle of moonshine.
Most days, though, he'd let me float through the ocean
of sleep, spotting narwhals and megamouth sharks
from a bathysphere of bunched up blankets.
 
Since then, I’ve seen a skeleton of Homo floresiensis.
I’ve learned to burn water while making macaroni for my wife.
I've dreamed tiny hobbit hands stretched forth toward mine.

Cryptozoology 
By: Les Kay