Ruminant

You give the child a book.



There is sunlight, but first
the idea of sunlight.



warmth or now



You give the child a book
and a thin sentence

etches its length
into the hand.



Before the punctuation, a small
wren perched.



The child finds it

mute, unsung.



You give the child a book
and in it, a story.

Two sheep. A meadow.
A wolf. Red

appears as the color

of reading the story’s
ending. The story ends

with a sudden violence.
And in this book, in this story,

the child finds
deep within the sheep

stomachs gorged with notes,
hymnals poised with noiselessness.



The child reads psalterium in the lining.



And what one thing is, it is.



Then the metaphors
leak too wide.



The child reads, we are all sheep, we are
but grass. In the story, the child



sees the paradox of preying, being
preyed upon.

An idea of

a small wren
nested in the O

of song

then flutters through the mind.

A simple thought

swaddled in the woolly
cloud of its language

becomes the woolly cloud.



You give the child a book,
and he opens the book.