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CHILD
He
is your baby. Or your
daughter’s or granddaughter’s.
He cannot speak but has begun to crawl.
Before long he will be an importunate child, charging at you with
questions, testing his will or showing it under control.
I
did not believe in the gods, in miracles or magic.
But faith, though no explanation, works.
I like the idea of belief. I
believe in this child’s goodness.
Which is an illusion. He
owes his niceness to luck.
My
love for him is unreasonable and overwhelming.
If I could only extend it to trees and rivers; to animals and
garbage; to cities and institutions!
But this is a family matter.
Only my native city comes anywhere close.
His
love for me (he turns it on, then returns to a toy) is so undeserved, so
smiling and trusting and lacking in calculation.
Is it an instinctual ploy, a cuteness to win attention?
I think, for I am flooded with tender gratitude, that I do not
care where it came from.
Without
some such pale copy of feeling I could not see a leaf and have the idea
of Leaf. No thoughts would
arrange themselves. Without
emotion thought is impossible. How
he extends me!
Holding
this child, I feel a nonchalance towards fear, more heady than the highs
of rocky expeditions, more intoxicating
than books.
For this
child I would take
up with magic and
contradictions. I have
begun to.
Alan
Marshfield
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