20

Good Night Moon, and Good Night Little One

The child in the hall is three years old

His bones and teeth tell his age

That precisely; I find I want

To tell him so many things

All of them irrelevant, of course

But three year olds are babies still …

And he just seems so damned young.

19

Honouring Esther*

One of the osteo experts

Is frantic to put her

Somewhere while the group

Are partying hearty

It’s Friday night

After a particularly

Grueling week after all

But she is 2500 years fragile—

Would we be creeped out,

He wonders, if she were

To overnight in our room –

I tell him, not in the least

Secretly thrilled

She’ll be in our care

*archaeologists name everything, from equipment to cars to, of course, skeletons – when first this one was found, there was no way to tell the sex, so the students named it “Mr. Garrison” after a transgendered person on the TV show South Park, I believe. However when they discovered the foetus and the other unmistakable indicators that this was a woman, I found myself thinking of her as “Esther” – I have no idea why, but it just seemed me and so Esther she is.