Miniature

The doll house builder loves to be in charge;
a master of proportion, he's aware
that tiny rooms make children's hands feel large

enough to make decisions: who sleeps where,
to place a porcelain bathtub in the hall,
or prop the baby in a grown-up's chair.

He traces flowers on a papered wall
then smooths the flaxen hair from a doll's face,
and wonders, as he does, if a thing so small

can't help but feel a passive kind of grace
as hands move her from place to place to place.

Copyright © 2002, 2003 Lorna Knowles Blake All rights reserved
from The Formalist
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission