when you are eleven, or perhaps twelve,
   it might even have been thirteen
      one can never quite recall with exactness
      for some reason I was reading dickens at four
   so we shall have to assume I had gone through the ball ache
   and into the sheet stiffening world

   when you are of an age
and a relative gives you a microscope
it is a little unfair of them to be shocked
- when combining the pleasures - you
invite them to see the miracle of a fresh slide
   enhanced by a squeezed drop of ink
   from a - aptly named - felt pen

I vaguely recall that gentleman naturalists
   upon seeing sperm for the first time
used it as further proof of moral degeneracy
   that the gamekeepers and footmen
- from whom they extracted -
were themselves extracted from serpents
      or had a diet with excess of eel

and I taste this somewhat
   when overcome with my normalcy
   - and with equipment to prove it -

my mother is not impressed
though my aunt shows interest