deus-ex-machina

It is good to sit down to birthday cake
with children, who think it is the entire point
of life and who, therefore, respect each detail
of the ceremony. There ought to be a rule,
he thought, for who gets to lick the knife
that cuts the cake and the rule should have
its pattern somewhere in the winter stars.
Which do you add to the tea first, he’d asked,
the sugar or the milk? And the child had said,
instantly: “The milk.” (Laws as cool
and angular as words: angular, sidereal.)