“Okay, Tim. I know you’re a little embarrassed but you’ve gotta know this stuff to be a grownup.”

“Okay.”

“Alright:

“This is a…?”

“Bird.”

“Bee.”

“Bee, right. Sorry, Dad.”

“What did we learn are some common indicators for bees?”

“Head, thorax, ab…domen…”

“Don’t just read the chart.”

“Okay, uh, the pointies.”

“Antennas. Good start. What else.”

“Clear wings. Four legs. Feathers.”

“Christ, Tim, feathers are birds!”

“I’m sorry, Dad!”

“No, I’m sorry… I shouldn’t get upset. This can be embarrassing for me, too.”

“I know. I wish we were just talking about vaginas, sperm, and condom application.”

“Me, too, son.”

There is a fountain on the moon, nestled beside a tiny hill.  Like a black hole (and perhaps it is), the fountain ensnares the sunlight that touches it (making it invisible to satellites and the like), collecting the light as liquid.  And when the moon waxes, becoming the blackest black you could imagine, He comes crawling across the lunar sands on hands and knees, thirsty for the cool moonlight, and drinks it dry.  Then, before the light returns, He slinks back to his observatory beneath the hill—to watch us, and to whisper to us, as He has always done.

The egg waits, nestled in silence.  Nothing but warm sunlight and occasional bits of falling dust have touched the shell since its deposit, a timeless interval to the embryo within.  But now it stirs, that tiny life becoming at last aware of a world without, which it must now join—for nature thrives upon new life.  It pokes its snout, then its entire head through the crust of North Africa, and as it struggles free it cries for its mother, who must be nearby, for who would abandon to the coldness of death a child who’d never done anybody harm?