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of all the words my mother gave me
the second was odysseuscomehome.
the first was stop
clear & clean as yew
in a room whorled with men in need
of no witch to become animals.
the gods bring the figs at year’s end,
the gods have not yet brought my father
over the sea.
nestor’s son peisistratus is too young for my mother
to count him as my mentor.
my father’s nurse says playmate—
i suck salt from my hair, dreaded up
with ocean & i say more
& when peisistratus stretches his arms
his shirt slips little ships’ sails
at the blades of his shoulders.
he says the jealous gods
cut man in two & left us
searching always for our other half.
as her fingers make waves of brushed wool—
telemachus, one day you will marry.
mother, i say, i do not want glory.
you will marry, you will be a man
words like the threads
taut & precise in the loom
made of something that once was nothing
& isn’t anything yet:
you will be a man like your father.
a man un-like my father is a man
who is here?