Clear and dark gills of mushrooms

Haloes in children’s drawings—the double-gravity

of light and homeland.

It’s true

in the rhubarb patch behind our home—licking the ends,

dipping them into sugar,

chewing and spitting out the pith—that’s

the way children are. Resting alone in the tin shed for rakes, resting inside

the enormous wall

of the white lilac bush. I had my proof,

like growing hair—

that there’s nothing to do about the dailiness

of intimacy. Freshborn animals—

the parsley smell of their afterbirth,

and my first-dream of the lightning

that ricochets between two blue glaciers—these became the questions of deserving

or demanding

a lover who refers to me as Luxury—

but won’t sleep along me, not tonight.