Aren’t they strict:  The grownup

Ambassadors they of raw wings

And extraction tools so strange

How they flicker just out of reach

 

Only at the moment of this one eclipse

One might view their shades like the moon’s

On a swatch of money to a child entrusted: 

This fleeting father whose fingers pry

 

At one’s arm strappadoed past the edge

Of the bed the arm hitched and probing

The human side of the mattress—and

Isn’t it sudden:  The revolving nursery door

 

Which daisychains the teeth from one’s jaw

On a string one after the other much like

The hand of the mother charged full of static

Urging one past the blighted threshold—

 

Bodiless arm which blindly arranges

The serrated currency of the fairies

Into maws far predating reason

These premature ones:  Aren’t they tiny:

 

The ones the string leads by the mouth

To the market of faeries and ones made 

Expert in manners and patterns

Of prices assigned to each bruise’s shade

 

Ones who wake underneath beds unfamiliar 

Each night to parents whose long

Labored shadows canopy down

Their shrouds as one’s pillowcase radiates

 

Quills of this muffled voice:  Isn’t it

Someone’s:  Some language jangling

From beneath the pillow that winnows

A mouthful of other children’s teeth