To Childbearing Hips

I have wanted you; I have wanted you arc
though I am arkless, though I have no tide,
no ships. My body is miserable as a lunar calendar,
it hardly even comprehends melatonin. I wake up
before the sun does, and sometimes
I fall asleep with it high noon, light
not at rest, my body misshapen and senseless.

I have caressed myself attempting to massage you in,
working with a sculptor's busy hands
to curve myself, remold my flesh, take a cue
from Prometheus and learn mettle and to mess
with divine intentions. Diviner intentions. I am
almost God here in my lack of tan, my pale skin
reflecting the sun so strongly passersby burn from it

and I stay pale. Godawful my lack. I could never father
because always I feel children like a tumor
growing inside my abdomen, begging for space
to relent, begging for birds and anachronism,
fresh air is missed my womb is a dank place stilted.
I have a firefly in my stomach, thinking of you
it brightens and I grow restless. I have malapropism,

also Desire, also a tombstone erected premature
with name effaced and entirely blurred. In fact
the cenotaph's significance is of new beginning,
the old me dead, new me happier, perhaps Dahlias
born as cemetery flowers. But premature
because it hasn't happened "yet." As if with "yet"
I could indicate my eventual reminiscence--

Me sitting there in a wicker chair, on a shaded porch
in Tennessee, sipping mint julep, speaking to my wife
or husband: Darling, do you remember when I was a man?
But no. It can never happen, my tight skin restricted.
But no. Though I long for you and your sensual flamboyance,
though I arc for you I do not have your angles
or permission. I am a straight board, my body but wooden.

I miss you because you are not inevitable, yet. Yet you are seeded
if poorly nurtured. Yet you are of consequence. I look for you in the dirt
where maybe I could have grown up thoughtless. You are an ossuary garden.
You are my pollen allergy. You are of much consequence.