Thinking Like Children

My father used to ask a question:
riddle me this--
two snakes are 
eating each other tail first, what happens?
and I imagine
a shrinking circle
ending as a blink
like the sudden disappearance
of a pricked soap bubble
and they are gone--erased
like a smudged vowel
gone like the inner radiance of rain
from still water
a smoke ring hazing away to nothing
though it began as grey halo
on a dust angel.
My six-year old sister, musing on the meaning of life
when I was four, wondering aloud in the ellipsis...are we a dream
being dreamed
and if so, what if the sleeper
wakes, and I think of myself in the mind of a startled god
and we cannot hold our shape long
in the event of the blue day become
thin water colour
washing down wet paper
and I cannot answer
though I sleep, often.
And now, my children grow into themselves
as with the last breath inflation
of an adult life
they fill their clothing
and seem real enough.

And I look at the world they enter
where they live at the centre of our concern
and I name the one snake
Future, and the other
Here and Now
and am careful of their appetite
for memory and dream.