[1] A girl swaddled in winter gear Crawls around the table where He sits and gobbles sonnets, Even as he knows very well that Lines don't show their true face If run past quickly, post haste, Or when deployed without grace.

Yet he is like that babe With her need to touch everything And be touched by everything, To rediscover again the border where The self ends and the world begins.

[2] The girl stands up, makes her Red-haired mother take off her Goose down armor, and then Runs about the room gurgling in Joy, making sounds with meanings She is not aware of: book, look. And then she accidentally touches His leg with her palm and grins.

At the sight of her perfect but tiny chubby hands and feet, He quivers as a stray page might Riding about on the wind's back.

There was a time when he once bought books solely on the criteria of their weight. In that fashion he could get economies of scale, a cheaper cost per page.

Now his traveling portmanteau nearly full with all the books acquired on this journey, he begins to buys books for their slenderness; books of poetry mainly, books that have spines as slender as flower stalks, books like that one he had once given a woman (whose ability to quote verse had filled him with amazement) saying,

"Let this be the bouquet of wild irises that I didn't bring with me for you, this winter evening."

Passing by Sally Bird's Bird Park, Through the twitter of sparrows Hovering over the bone white Bodies of the beeches covered With a fresh coat of snow,

He says to himself, "Isn't this Enough to raise your arms In praise, dear malcontent, This coven of sparrow song, Under a March sun even if There isn't her body to lay Your hands upon tonight And remember, O remember, All the rivers of Zion?"