child

child held his smile in careful hands, bewitching
any foolish untoward look that stumbled over
his close small ears, small hungry gatherers

predatory gatherers of short wish-worn words
eroded in their passage, stripped of any
contemplation, strangled in their failing

and child did a revel-fat pavane, clever
little foot toe heel prance, again, again
but slyer higher slower, catching in their

bemusement, entrapping in their fugue
music that dements with butcher-quick slivers
of such small and miraculous perfection

a bringer down of the already undone, the
unwrapped unwoven unstoppered founts
that followed child, feeding him their

humiliation, their prayerful supplication
consorts to his ennihilation, plastic figures
before his throne, before his hunger

for child was a hungry child, who lived
upon the sad embittered desolation
that lay beneath his dancing feet