Self-Made Man

be still and know that you are loved
unlike any other

the trees, joining branches over the
road, make a canopy of green leaves
for her to walk beneath

detritus placed out on the curb
for the trashman--Wednesday is
collection day, black bags bulging, larval

in them,
oddments--an alphabet soup of letters, some
errant organs still wrapped in sterile plastic, a
kidney here, a heart there, two eyes (the better
to see you with, my dear, as the old wolf said)

she assembles a whole in half the
time it takes her to walk to Bronxville, the
original reconstituted man, add water and
stir briskly, with your smile lipsticked on

expert, so, at making something from
nothing

looping great strands of DNA around
her fingers, fashioning this self-made
man, the codes catching in her
nails

she'll teach him to talk, too,
a word at a time, til they
totter in a tower of Babel, together,

embracing his newness in her
arms, him, slick against her in
an August thunderstorm,

fleshy, this man of remnants, who,
new-born, looks upon her, pale-eyed,
learns love like an old repetition

of sums sung out from a window