When did time start? my son asks, looming at 4 am.
The animal in me startles, cries out—
his face so close and sudden in the dark,
it’s only a moment that I don’t know him.
But it’s the kind of thing he asks.
He could mean the tick of the clock, 
his knowledge of bedtime, time to wake up,
or he could mean his own beginning.
Burdened with a restless mother, 
he understands distance is a thing to measure
(how much longer mama?) 
between here and there and when 
we are on our way toward home again.
Already he’s unearthed stories of stone fish 
in a Wyoming desert, of cliffs in Nova Scotia 
scored with prehistoric trees, an Oreodont skull 
in South Dakota—he knows that rocks themselves have ages.
He might have been asking about old human things: 
temple gods and sacred rites, lost cities—
he’s raced his brother around ancient mounds in Ohio, 
walked undulations of an earthen serpent’s 
twists and turns once aligned with moon, sun, 
and steady seeming stars.
Do you hear that? he asks after I’ve coaxed him 
back beneath the covers, snuggled down 
beside him—a sound like clanging pipes, 
like a radiator we don’t have, shudders 
and I rise to look out the window, 
turn to tell him it is only hard rain.
There are at least two ways
to measure a life: the human one,
and the universe’s grander score
of expanse, immensity, collapse.
I lie awake to the wash of it.