Don’t
tell me how to be a man.
If
I want to wake with the dawn on Easter morning,
crawl
out sleepy-eyed into the lawn’s cold dew
and
lie wrapped in a blanket of sunrise
as
the heat of day burns the tomb from wet limbs
and
the first light of the songbirds
sends
streaks of yellow across a field of blue;
if
I want to write a sonnet on sea-foam
or
on the seaweed that wrapped around me once
when
I was young and its tentacles were like a baptism;
if
I want to climb an evergreen tree
like
it was the mast of a man’o’war
and
sit in the sky with the wind
as
my only friend,
then
I will. Leaving you, arms
wrapped
around your knees staring
at
your navel, trying to remember the manliest
way
to unfold yourself. Until you decide
whether
your works are enough to earn a rite of passage
—and
even after that—
don’t
try to tell me what manliness is. It’s not
for
you or me to decide, thank God.
