When this child of explosions
opens her mouth,
fences blow down.

When this child of fences
averts her eyes,
a flagpole bends.

When this child of the flagpole
sits down to dinner,
the meat burns phosphor white.

Phosphor child,
flagpole child, fence and
explosion child, offspring

of the warrior age, largely unparented by us,
fostered more by the fire and the wind,
fed on and led on and made to dance

hot and crushed, around and around —
oh, my country, ’tis of thee, sweet child,
of thee I sing.  Throw yourself

into the cold, roll till you’re quiet
and quenched — then get
as far away from us as you possibly can.

in our most remarkable moments
we should remind ourselves
that at our primal best
we know what we should do.

our bodies will take over and
we’ll run, or take tighter hold;
feed, fight or flee.
these soft and convoluted brains

want to complicate
everything
but our bodies
know better.

when we stop evolving for a second
and just are lovers or warriors
or right-acting cowards, we are
what we were grown to be

when long ago
we lived
under the
African stars.