Poet's Choice

Smoke across the bridge

plunders the eyes,

the wind speaks back

what you recognize.

Jimmies rain down

the frozen zone,

the drops drop green,

who dropped the sun?

The dawning, quickly expanding consciousness of the baby who gurgles at the shapes overhead, kicking with excitement ("on his back, on the run"), finds an expression in verse. But not only an expression. While the poem succeeds in feeling as if it is from little Gus's viewpoint, it also suggests an adult's protective awareness of the world's defects: the dropped sun, the child's own fist aimed at it, the question of identity in "who rings the bell?" Even the existence of presidents, knives and smoke implies the complicated world to come. Including that world in cadences both reassuring and exciting, comical and soothing, may be another function of the verses we chant to our children.

(Joshua Weiner's poem "Hanging Mobile" is from his book "From the Book of Giants." Univ. of Chicago. Copyright 2006 by the University of Chicago.)