Pygmalia

His lips first I fashioned,
apple blossoms I bit the pink curve into;
His cheeks next,
musky clay warmed round by my palm cups,
stubbled with bur oak acorn caps.
Two river-rubbed rocks I set for his eyes,
glinting with schist like silver minnows.
His neck sinews last winter’s grapevine
I braided around the antlers of his collarbones.
For his back an acre’s ground,
each vertebrae a fossil unturned.
Two mounds of earth I kneaded into buttocks,
bound to a hickory my arms’ circumference measured,
forking down to grounded knotty roots,
forking up to a driftwood-smooth branch
from which I hung a spider’s sack
cradling a pair of dusky plums.
An armful of moss I distributed,
a little bit everywhere;
a thatch of wild vetch his crown;
fronds to point the delicate curling way
home down his belly.
Last I pressed my tongue to form
the moist interior nautilus of his mouth,
whispered into the snail shells of his ears
his secret name,
and brought my self to life.