My Students Try to Avoid Referring to Me in the Third Person

Whether or not we wanted it to,
the language has approached us: a hart
with velvet antlers, its eyes hollow only
so that we can fill them with the fear
we feel when confronted with such gentleness.
The fear that reminds us of our capacity to hurt.

The hart beats its hoof against the earth,
sound making its presence real as any offering.
Like Nebuchadnezzar, we can bend double, subsist
on whatever makes its way from the forest floor
into our mouths, and go on forever insisting
we have given up our need for insistence.
Or we can accept what we were given in the beginning.
The power to see a thing, and knowing it,

call it by its proper name.