His First Book

His First Book
Christopher Bogart

He stared at me today
across a vast expanse of fear.
His eyes were soft and docile,
yet I knew he was afraid.
Not with the kind of fear
I know he must have felt before,
one born and bred of pain, of loss,
of life, of years, of tears once shed
without the slightest hope
of ultimate redemption.

His form, once scarred by steel and lead,
now squirmed around the confines of his chair.
It was a chair he’d chosen for himself,
a chair of hope he’d sat in every day
with a yearning to learn.

But it wasn’t the same fear he’d felt before today.
This had a new and unacquainted feel.
And yet, within the depth of that sweet pain
lie his only hope, for now he had learned
to hide no longer deep within his past,
but find a different path, a new future,
and he had placed a tenuous trust in me.

And so, in a soft and soothing voice, I began to read,
and he, his chin resting gently on his scarred hands,
settled in to hear, to listen,
not with ears, but with imagination,
the opening lines of his new world,
his new hope,
his first book.