Love, Like a Child

To love quietly.
Since those days when
My voice was not yet fully formed,
I loved.

Platitude,
Ordinary things,
Whatever it was a child loved,
I loved.

The inchoate song
Sounding like everyone’s anthem,
The white oblivion,
The cold breaking soft cheeks…

What I’d learned from my grandfather,
Whom I loved,
I was a child, with words all polite,
For I loved all things:

The sheaves of newspaper,
The rocking chair,
The sensation of home,

The overhang of his glasses
Upon his stub of a nose,
Sunburnt, however outliving
The humid weather…

I loved the world, ad infinitum,
Since my days of childhood,
Where the snow lived,
And the heat,

And its frisson,
And their words,
And those who spoke awesomely
Of the ordinary things that I held close.

Love like a child,
If it means to sit with one,
And hear what he or she loves,
too.