How Children See

Children see melodies

crackling, jumping, stretching,
crowding, living 

like hummingbird bones taking 
off
from a cage of suet.

They see corn, 
millet, oats, and sunflowers,

devoured
into the bloodstream, racing
down the arteries of a secret language, 

a communication flooding 
the transcendent, 

and the soft distance 
of headlights, as she waits
for him to come back. 

Children see storm clouds
and distant planets,

the tendons of other animals 
moving about,

and the seconds growing 
rarer and more precious

until they are
turned into tiny heart-shaped 
sapphires 

gently smoothed into
thin, pine needle sharp points.

They see tears, 
dampened napkins 

and the concealed rot 
of a mother’s disease.

George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, the Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Havana Times, the South China Morning Post, the Buffalo News, and more. 

See all his poems on Tea House here.

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