PHAEDRA HANGS OUT THE WASHING

the beauty of boys

in a morning-frost, white

skin running between white  

sheets snagged by wooden

pegs            

              the kind that have no wire,

are solid, inescapable. Gods.  

he,

still,

my stepson,

watching as the world cracks open,

stubble yet to scar his lip,

but lines of man-muscle on the boy-bones.