6 Standish Court

From loam he came, from white grub,

from toad and gutter and rock,

           my idea of a curse,

the hose unkinked and its hiss

spraying over us, sprinkler

to which we’re pushed after the tasting.

           Then in sun we sleep,

flushed, on towels or mown grass,

beneath crab–apple limbs

until the insects forget us,

           though we hear them singing still,

a divided swarm, legs squirming

in the shade of the picnic table

where he ashes a bleached shell.

           Their song now a voice,

now an arrow, stung cheeks,

his mouth declaring he’ll free us

(his third lie) from our yolk,

           and how well I remember

him wiping his knife

on a pant leg and his face

squared down on us, not looking

           with but through his eyes,

then his knife severing our stems.

See how with pride he moves

among squash vines,

           how he has the strength

of their fingers around chicken wire,

stunted vegetables he passes over

since we’re tasteless to all but pigs.

           And it’s true that some of us

were lucky to age, that I was cut

with a small hole and entered,

dried until my seeds rattled inside,

           I who made the mistake

of believing in the blossom,

what’s past and defiled,

to linger on the sound of a child

           crying in a basement

(a cricket trapped in a jar),

then to lurk with my own fork

until I can speak again,

           I tell you I slept through

the worst heat, and also confess

I needed his rough thumbs inside,

as there was one law

           for the lion and another for the ram,

and now I can speak finally

beyond the sun that burned

the crab–apple’s groin, and,

           though I know no life bears

repeating, I want to climb his tree

in that midsummer sun,

my towel drying on the grass,

           his face below me just a glint

or a question or an old man laughing.