Essay on Boyhood

I am standing at the lip of the ocean, watching

the first layer of fog cling and lift from the earth.

In each other’s arms, boys practice case-making

in the courts of their fathers, say, I love you, I love you,

I like the sand in your hair, voices steaming in the cold.

They say a person can craft anything out of language.

Someone, write a poem in which this tense isn’t crafted

in mine. They say it’s once in a lifetime you can kiss

something and at last make it human. Give me two

of these lifetimes. I’ll kiss my hands into a cathedral

of all they have touched—

the flour on your thumbprint the night we tried

to make dough rise in the oven, us so human.

The boys who wave their legs over cliffs, kiss,

who make the rising fog into an unpracticed language.

I am thinking, only now at the lip

of the ocean, about the shape of your mouth—

open and gathering our lives in years

of hunger and bread. Years of soles

sinking through sand, digging holes

so deep two lifetimes could fit in them.

I am thinking, only now, about writing that house

you’ve always wanted, somewhere in San Francisco

and with a porch so close to the beach we could make

a living from all the washed-up rubble.

Somewhere, all this has already been kissed

and collected. Here, we are proof of everything.

So much lip, so much rise.