How did we come to learn desire
should mean first, endure? To want
so much that the hunger to appease
must yet be strung as far and taut
as it can go: the way
a mother will demur, pretend
she’s eaten, so the child should have
no need to feel remorse for her own
uncontainable hungers?
And for the father to carry
a child on his back, say
it’s okay, the soles of his shoes
are thicker and more used
to the hard cobble of roads?
They sleep, then open
their eyes. Day after day
the thrift of open palms which
can mean grace given, or withheld.