To Poems

My poems: fledglings, heirs,

Plaintiffs and executors,

The silent ones, the loud,

The humble and the proud.

As soon as the shovel of time

Threw me onto the potter’s wheel—

Myself without kith or kin—

I grew beneath the hand, a miracle.

Something stretched out my long neck

And hollowed round my soul

And marked on my back

Legends of flowers and leaves.

I stoked the birch in the fire

As Daniel commanded

And blessed my red temper

Until I spoke as a prophet.

I had long been the earth—

Arid, ochre, forlorn since birth—

But you fell on my chest by chance

From beaks of birds, from eyes of grass.