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.