Covet

First, Hunger

40 First, Hunger Every morning I know your hunger. Your belly flat as a river stone— find your place. I am your mother who knows how night hollows your gut, wants communion after waking alone. I know that appetite slick with hunger for bread spread thick with pale butter, melon cut from its green bone, meat shaved dark and thin. I am your mother who sets a place, too, for your brother, settles him among the clatter of knives and bowls, who does not ask but knows your hunger, and would draw from deep wells still another glass of milk, sweet and cold, fill your cup to spilling. I am your mother and you are wild vines stretching ever higher, through brush and lengthening shadow, out of boyhood and its nascent hunger, toward that rich banquet, far from your mother. ...