fed with a few words, from birth,
such trouble to come, conjured
from the nowhere of someone’s imagining,
the unknown fruit plucked from the air,
as sweet to the tongue as to the ear,
found in the mouth, insatiable
as the earth
for all that falls to it:
food from the first,
the more or lessness of every breath,
fear of loss, forgetting
how it sounded/sounds,
how felt, whispered from one to the other,
taste me, up close to the flesh:
broach of the throat, berry after berry,
ripe upon the bough, trembling
to be picked, gleaned
from the threat of neglect:
and, perhaps, the untroubled sleep
between: satisfied