Homeschooling
Tracy Ryan
First published in The Weekend Australian, Dec 2016
Because the old
microscope when
we dusted it off was
crudely broken
and a new and subtler one
is coming, we prepare
by rehearsing
rules for handling:
sidelong eye for
precision in lowering
lenses, not headlong;
patience in making
and working slides,
letting cover-slip
drop deftly with tooth-
pick (all these nice
distinctions painful, still
utterly abstract, a prep
for no lab but this
inescapable partnership
from which you’ll develop
self-reliant experiment)
and only ever carrying
the weighty instrument
with one hand under,
like lifting a baby
I say, the way I
lifted you, and mimic
with empty air now
the shape we made
