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.

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Copyright © 2011 Lynnell Edwards All rights reserved
from Covet
Red Hen Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission