And Grandson Leo comes to mind, squealing
with joy in my arms last week when I slobbered
with joy on his tummy, then, back flexed—the colic!—
something so quickly so wrong, he struggles
to arch himself free, free of this the slobbering world.

If the body is in pain—and it is—before it learns
to speak, are vowels the remnants of howls,
each word a vanished lullaby? To soothe
the ache of all that creating? The body is at birth
a wreck, sore and sorry—what shore is this?

Here’s Leo churning at nothing, being changed,
the promise of some eventual saying, hands
reaching out to miss, then clasp, then miss again—
What’s me? What’s not? The thoughts, Leo, a body
must tend! To which I add maker, maker of shits.

And maker of shits-not-even, as when
your little brow was ploughed with furrows
and, Thought! I said to your pa, Naa, said Jake, gas.
I should have guessed, digest, digest! I was a brain-
riddle body once, sucked the breast what’s-me?

Gnawed the bone what’s-not? (But doesn’t
it long to be thought, gas?) And later when
I wrote the note, “What’s a body need?” the poem
answered, Rhythm, as in, And on the seventh day
He rested…full of himself—all that creation—
and hungered for his not-self. In the dream
                                                of a shattered form,
within the shattering, the form.
                       What shore is this, soul-maker?
            And the poem answered: Leo!