A Dream from the Children’s Museum


Yes, our mantra was child’s play
is child’s work, and we sat knees up,
three mothers around a tiny red table
with red wood chairs that scraped
green linoleum as our weight shifted.

We were planning exhibits,
shuffling paper on the table
to think of how to entice
more children to play.
How serious we were

when a two-year-old had already
shown me what he loved at noon,
sorting rocks in my river rock pile
one by one, handing them with great
care to his father who put them back.

I was the chatty one, this is how
my daughter became a geologist,
picking up penny rocks. When I asked 
the little boy in his blue cotton hat
with gold afro-curls erupting out

to come back to my yard to play
some day, he had no word for yes,
he kept on sifting stones. Among
them he found his first worm.