Children’s Drawings of the Universe
George Moore

There is never anything wrong.
The world generally sits at the center,
the family is there, sprawled out along
the whole curvature of the earth,
the stars are in the heavens and
all’s right with … but there’s no big
face up above, no smile into which
they pray. There are the clouds
and the stars, the heavens as a place
where angels wander aimlessly
singing out loud, and smiling almost
relentlessly. Is it here the crack
begins? The smile that is circular
like the planet, like the heavens?
The image of the self in the center
of a circle, a cage, a place that’s both
physical and imagined, the end
and our beginning. The universe
no larger than the playground,
the neighborhood, and then, the city.
The universe we pretend to love
and yet hate, the darkness below us
and above. The faces of the family
strained, the stick figures like rigid
replicas, the bones of the world
cast out for a game like Shagai.
And gamblers hope for a big win,
a child’s insight into Creation.

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