Birds and Bees

We have to explain sex to our son,
who, at this age, is still more interested
in Minecraft and fart jokes but that distant
land is on the horizon and men who walk
in without a map tend to think
they own the place.

I’d like to be able to give you map,
but instead, I have only this handful
of star-lit stories.

You might find an island,
or a continent. A mountain or a valley
or a sinkhole of longing. No one is
polished marble, we’re all rough-hewn,

embedded in dirt. You won’t know
where you belong until you wear
out your shoes with walking
and your heart has been wrung
out like a threadbare dishrag.

Only then will you know that
you cannot touch a land

without changing it,
and being changed. The rain
that sculpts you was once
the ocean that bore you.

This is why I cannot give you
a map, or even a lesson in cartography:
you are the land, my son,
and the rain, and the ancient
ocean born anew. Everyone

is. Only fools think they own
anything but their own wonder
at the dusky sky, and the biting chiggers
and the stone that was once mud. So go

in wonder, my son. Touch a lover
like you would a broken milkweed pod,
with all the tenderness of seeds
about to take flight.