Chimeras

My daughter says she is the Wolf Singer.

She plants the vertebrae of  her enemies

like seeds. She’s three.

I understand.

I too wear my antlers most of the time

now. It only hurts the first

hundred years. Sometimes she says:

I was here

before, I looked in the forest but

you were still a seed of you, not yet,

so I waited. In my daughter’s

rock garden, today is water’s birthday,

the moon is closing his eyes

for a haircut, and my secret crown keeps

getting caught on birds. Sing

with your first tongue

my daughter, we can’t afford to be

human long.