Sonnet for Obatala

creator of Earth, sculptor of mankind

My head is yours. The amount of its heaven,
its lightness under any given thoughtspell.
The rest of me, too—the little I love of living
folded behind my knees—padre, I can feel it
weathering. Today I am the same age Goethe was
when he fell in love with a woman’s bruised eye.
She saw white where there wasn’t, and then everything
became fraught with shine. Tell me, was she to argue
with light? This all started with a hen spreading dirt
atop the sea, we take shape because the continents
need swelt. It is nice to be needed. Wanted, though,
that is its own suffering. In the evening, I learn
a fox can hear a clock ticking from forty yards away.
I am so endable, and yet, I am kept.