With everything in my body I trust
him to run out for milk or sugar or a bottle

of pinot noir & come back home.
I’ve heard him sing. His voice isn’t beautiful

but he can scrape through classics
like “Wheels on the Bus” or “Old McDonald”

the way a rake scrapes over pebbled asphalt.
I’ve been mesmerized, sitting with him

criss-cross-apple-sauce, as he reads to me
The Little Blue Truck or Knuffle Bunny.

My only reservation is that I don’t think he cares
that he has not been loved the way he deserved

to be loved in his boyhood so please be gentle
with him

— not the way you would be with an infant
but gentle as you would be with a rabbit

wounded by a fence so far back
it couldn’t tell you where it was.