A Vast Human Action

(There are storms on the sun itself, but here all is peaceful and temperate, thought Moses.)
- Saul Bellow, Herzog

Ma’am, may I touch your baby’s belly?
I am doing research.

It has been some time since I held my hand
to an infant’s stomach,
which I recollect to have been unexpectedly firm,
rather like a warm, skin-covered egg.

But again, it has been a minute.
I know them to be gogglers, grabbers
of fingers, spitter-uppers of fresh milk,
surprised anew each time
hands open to reveal the same old face.
I am in awe.

No newborn can guess the crookedness
of my imagination.
If it cries in my arms
it’s because, balanced between the familiar
and the unfamiliar,
it has made the one calculation it is able.

You know, the sun looks the same today
as it did the day the Mongol hoards
first seethed over the hills east of the villages,
an unnoticed black fringe.
And every man has his own batch of poems,
which he thinks more convincing with each recitation.
They sag away from truth like breasts and jowls.
So if you have some happiness, conceal it.
If you are honest, keep it to yourself.

All that said,
would it be too strange for me
to ask your child a question, ma’am,
to bury my face awhile
in its new, sunwarmed hair?

© JM Francheteau