Childlessness by Henri Cole

Childlessness

For many years I wanted a child

though I knew it would only illuminate life

for a time, like a star on a tree; I believed

that happiness would at last assert itself, 

like a bird in a dirty cage, calling me, 

ambassador of flesh, out of the rough

locked ward of sex.

Outstretched on my spool-bed, 

I am like a groom, alternately seeking fusion

with another and resisting engulfment by it.

A son's love for his mother is like a river

dividing the continent to reach the sea: 

I believed that once. When you died, Mother, 

I was alone at last. And then you came back, 

dismal and greedy like the sea, to reclaim me.