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.