1.
Each of us got a cookie 
and a paper box of milk.
We were not allowed to squirm,
but we were allowed to draw.
We were meant to trace John 3:16
and color it in and believe
and do in the margins, with our fat pencils, 
the figures of 3=1: father, ghost, son.
Afterward we could play Hide and Seek in the graveyard.  
That was all part of it, the agreement we entered
in our dark little suits and dresses.
We'd have been in trouble otherwise:
the world was too large at that time
and it grew its teeth and bones
with the black inside.
Plus if we did it we'd live forever and if not then not.

2.
Knowing our hairs and mistakes.
Taking people away.
Blue-eyed man, hurt man in the window,
with the milk coming through all different colors,
the one sleeping standing up,
the man with the sheep there,
he's okay there.
We're supposed to love him,
and only him, hidden everywhere 
in the air like radio.

3.
You the milk of the honeysuckle, the milk of the honeybee.
You the blue milk-snakes in our legs and arms.
You the milk in winter made of snow and vanilla.
You the milk we read by under the blue coverlet 
     when we were supposed to be sleeping.
You the milk at the foot of the stairs
     when in the night we wanted a glass of cold milk.
You the thick milk of argument rising up the stairs.
The long milk at night,
     the milk we ran to
     from milk to milk all the way home.
You were supposed to be that milk
and not the thick dark between.
And not the pictures of children
on the milk cartonís side in the morning.