Lunettes

When my father crept in, all I saw
were his glasses in the moonlight,
watching as he lifted my nightdress.
Forty years later I open the dictionary
and find lunette. My finger points
and I remember that’s what we called them.
A little moon; spectacles;
the first semicircle of a horseshoe;
an arched aperture for the admission of light;
a crescent in a ceiling or dome
decorated with paintings or sculptures;
a blinker for a horse; a watch-glass;
in the guillotine – the hole for the victim’s neck;
a flue in the side of a glass-maker’s furnace
to admit smoke and flame;
a circular crystal case to hold the consecrated Host;
a linnet-hole; a forked iron plate
into which the stock of a field-gun carriage is inserted.