think of the worst book

Each page, each word, each sentence 

Awful for a long time until

They are re-written

With the simple line drawings of a child

Obscuring words and pictures of 

darkness, evil, or moldy and stained 

garden-varietal venality

With the loveliest trees

Birds in flight /charcoaled nimbi

Outlined halos

Their feathery heads tilted

Ever-so-slightly-quizzical

Asking why are you sad?

Each page of darkness 

Transformed by this

Ferociously tender

Child-

Light, where there used to be all those

Terrible monsters

Crayoned over/ into heaven

By this poet-redeemer

word spoke to life.