They were a hard and practical people,
and when they said
they were willing to serve me,
I took what they had to give:
bowls of rain,
prayer-husks filled with meat.

(Their firstborn, I.)

They cut my foreskin
when heat was a prisoner in the ground.
The trees stood naked
though the sun in Taurus rose.

When I chewed twigs for a change
of texture,
they said the scars
on the trees were fire-marks,
that buds were sorry
from smoke
and the far blood's branching.

I listened to them
and grew: my hide, my legs,
the rhythm-and-rhythm
of an animal glimpsed at dusk.

(I was silent but not still.)

Wearing a wreath
of crocuses,
I walked the perimeter
because I liked
how the ground felt
under the soft pads of my feet.
Wet with the night's rain,
it reminded me of my gift:
a silence that was ingrown,
particular.

Because they could do nothing
about the feeder flies,
the nettles that bit my side,
they did not like it
when I moved,

they who planted the seedlings,
the small hooded flowers
where I tried to sleep.

I received their permission
and their lies,
and by guarding them,
by eating their brown bread,
I thought I would move beyond
the fact of flesh.

(Strength in my muscles, my legs.
The sting in my side
when I paced near the prickered fence.)

I kept my posture straight.
My mouth was wide and waiting.

Do you see?
I too had desire,
but as befits a fallen world
I could not survive
unless I calmed them
with my silence.

And so a childhood ended
and was buried:
quiet lion, latent lute,
their hands reaching to touch me.