FOR THE SMALL POEM
Now the hand brushes the page
whose lips are soft as a newborn baby’s.
She has just begun to breathe, to discover
the throat, the tongue, and her first sounds
burble up, contralto. It is all
we can do, to watch the phonic rungs
form their companionway to this vast deck
stacked with syllables and echoes.
What shall she make of it?
Water, we say, and point, and she says water,
a little softer, a little slower,
as the dawn spreads in full light on her brow;
she is not ours, this child,
who totters into outstretched arms.
—Anne Coray
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from Ivory (Anabiosis Press)