Page Swift taught me singing.
Sheikh Din, the five-times daily prayer.
Wolfe Lowenthal, the Yang style.
And one other, fons et origo, primal,
every thread leading back from today
to what I received, poured over me,
into me, given to me while others paid,
sometimes with the delight (and, how sad,
pride) of having been called to a true path,
sometimes burning me, caustic, me leaving
in apprentice tears, sometimes misnaming
but nevertheless locating a fault, forcing
me to strain against temperament, against
my own nature, refusing to do for me
what I must do for myself—even after
I acquired some mastery with the flavors
of up/down, charm/strange, top/bottom, etc.—
with every encounter jerking me back
to a beginning of not-knowing, and always
private, guarded, spiny, never touching,
shaming any hint of gossip—which I only
repeated because I pined to belong to—
such that even after decades I don’t dare
write the name, what I studied, or even
reveal his gender—
O hell.
Mountains and hills
fall on me.
Thistle
and thorn, bewilder my tracks.
Spring from the clay,
acacia, in front of the cave
where I go to ground.
Spider, pity me
and spin a veil across.
Emergency, emergency.
Hide me from my mouth,
my own bad mouth, which
from remote ages before
I was born into this world,
I had been warned about.