How I love to learn of old things
being newly discovered—
old things, which if they weren’t real
I might have imagined:

a case of sparkling wine, for instance,
prised from the hold of some long-sunken ship,
still drinkable—or that far-away tomb
whose ceiling an ancient queen had marbled 

blue with yellow stars.
It warms me, the way the human heart
angles endlessly in the deep, cool
blood of someone else’s past

even as the world dangles
its feet over the crumbling brink of itself,
new life ever at the edge of life—
Even now I hear my children

shedding layers in a doorway.
They’re playing that the younger
has given birth to the older.
She dribbles milk in his toothy mouth,

smooths his coarsening hair
with small, soft hands.
And now, I hear them say
they’ll board a time machine.