Finger in the Sand

I asked him how it had come to be

That humans had understood,

That the shape of the earth was a big round sphere

And also, if he would

Explain to me how the wisdom had come

That the sun doesn’t rise and set,

But that it is the earth’s rotation

On its axis that draws out the silhouettes

That grow dark in the evenings,

And brings back the morning shine,

And one other thing I wanted to know,

If he had but a little more time,

And that was how the ancients had garnered

That the moon is nearer than the sun.

For if one merely takes into account

Appearances of sense’s wisdom,

Sometimes the Great Ball of Fire

Seems more reachable.

It burns low in the hot noon sky.

Its energy offered is readily felt

While the moon sits cool and high.

And so he simply took his finger,

And diagrammed there in the sand,

Cosmological equations of simple dynamics

And differential derivative equations.

He told me as he drew them

All of these answers and more,

But, for the life of me

I can’t relate them,

So mesmerized, I, on that shore

Was, by his presence, and personality and

His knowledge of earth and of heaven.

He finished with, “Any more questions, Mom?”

For he was all of seven.

-jenn long