A Civil Tongue, by ERIC NELSON

To know leaf, my unnaming son

reaches for it from his perch

of father arms and bends

its stem like a bow, draws it

to his mouth and gums the light

green dark in his body’s darkness.

Until his tongue becomes civilized

enough to hammer its roof,

patter back of teeth and retreat

like boys banging neighbor’s doors,

lie still and let lips have

their say, he has no way

to take the outside in and claim

it, save taking it straight, swallowing

whole the whiteness of flowers.

How else will he know he can’t get

sorrow from a turnip, laughter from a bone?

He must taste the roundness of ball,

the knife’s truth, blanket’s comfort.

He puckers at the ambition of books,

the longing of postcards, grins

in the permanence of dirt, the charm

of his mother’s colored bracelet.

He frowns down the nothingness of mirrors.

From nothing outside, though, does he

absorb the ashy grit of death.

To that he must address himself.

From “Interpretation of Waking Life” (University of Arkansas Press: $16.95; 81 pp.) 1991 by Eric Nelson. Reprinted with permission.