Mama’s Boy

for Michel Tournier, The Four Wise Men

At least once a month a man
boards a bus bound for Detroit,
one bag, a few books. Nevertheless
he always tells himself
I just might
leave Cincinnati for good
just cut out
never look back...

When he arrives in the Motor City he drinks
and drinks it all in until he’s dead drunk
on all fours, a two-year-old
mama’s boy, bawling
all night night after night
for the salt-sweet milk of his sister-mother
turning in her sleep from a hard back
turning toward the Canadian border...

When at long last he takes
a bus back to the Queen City,
long after the only rest
stop, he notices the first
signs: merciless thirst,
gorging hunger, swollen ankles,
what the folks down south
call sugar.