Rocks

He pulls each rock from its place,
draws it close to his face, and licks it,
pronouncing ‘Good’ with such assurance
that I can almost be convinced to tongue
the thing myself.  The blue-green-gray stones,
hot from the sun, teach my child difference—
hot, cold, big, little.  He smacks them together,
clinks them with me, a kind of toast to a day with sun.
I tell him, ‘You can’t eat rocks.  Only the sea eats rocks,
then spits them out as sand.’ ‘Good,’ he says, this boy
who knows the world first by tongue, as if tasting
puts the words in his mouth, giving him grace
to pronounce what he knows to be true—good, good, good.