A Primer

after Primus St. John

Often there is a cave
or a river or a dark
and that’s where we are.

When it comes up,
I start to believe the mythologists
who made the world.
Meanwhile, I pretend
I am newly walled and hearing the law
for the first time and tearing
tearing the stories up and my sins
and my father.

But we are doing this together.
“That is not what I meant,”
the dark cave mouths,
“But you hear the same voice,
like a river, as I.”
So I swallow it: every last
Word from the honeyed
beginning, like it’s milk.

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