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Consider the Generosity of a One-Year-Old

who has no words to exchange with you yet,
and instead offers up her favorite drooled-on blanket,
her green rhinoceros as big as she is,
her cloth doll with the long blonde pigtails,
her battered cardboard books, swung open on their soggy pages,
her limitless heart.

If you were outdoors she would hand you a dead beetle,
a fistful of grass, a pebble,
by way of introduction or just because.
And if, a moment later, she wants it back,
it would be for the joy of passing
these simple symbols back and forth,
freely offered, freely relinquished,
This is me. Here is who I am. Oh.

In the same way, sun
drapes a buttered scarf across your face,
rose opens herself to your glance,
and rain shares its divine melancholy.
The whole world keeps whispering or shouting to you,
nibbling your ear like a neglected lover,
while you worry over matters of finance,
of “relationship,”
important issues related to getting and spending,
having and hoarding,
though you were once that baby,
though you are still that world.
by Alison Luterman

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