Perhaps

when he came to the house

she said – Boy these two girls

up here growing wild

like grass.
And he would have answered

with some farming reference,

like Girl you don’t know

you have to pull out dem wild weed

in the bud.
Perhaps this was when

she invited him to be father.
In that head filled with frothing

water

left behind in the jar

from which wilting week-old

anthuriums have been lifted
“Father” was not a clean or singular thing.

Not the first time that word has been churned up

in a mind of mud—
How close female flesh to wet dirt, how

little muscle-heave

to cleave open the tender

core of them two yellow-heart

breadfruit.
What she didn’t realise was

What she had done was

reached up and placed a crown on

his head.
But she wanted to make him

comfortable

She wanted

him to know

there was a place for him.
And he would bring into that house

tilting like a fishingboat

a type of steadying.
What she didn’t realise was

before him

the world had been a soft green thing

asleep in a shell.
But you cannot keep a man apart

who silvers dry evenings

with the glistening skin

of enormous cavalli.
True, she couldn’t know

the thing she was dealing with

the bullion-weight

of that word she had just pronounced

not breathless

but with two d’s sitting down

in the middle of it.
She couldn’t know what

he would do to

those two girls how he would use

the slick machine of his imagination

and the dark breadth of his wit.
She didn’t know that she had suddenly

made him

irretrievably rich.