Child

There’s an instant telephone line

Between me and any small child whose eyes I meet,

A deep and double smile that melts my bones,

I see whatever it was that made the stars

Of morning sing, and spectrum sparks from Kolob.

I feel the easy merriment, the bounce

Of weightlessness free from earth’s gravitational guilt,

A nameless nostalgia, a groping to pierce this fog.

I’ll peek-a-boo, clap, and marvel that your eye’s light

Is catalyst to my soul’s brim of being.

–Glenna C. Sanderson
Atascadero, 1978