Vasectomy

After the steaming bodies swept

through the hungry streets of swollen cities;

after the vast pink spawning of family

poisoned the rivers and ravaged the prairies;

after the gamble of latex and

diaphragms and pills;

I invoked the white robes, gleaming blades

ready for blood, and, feeling the scourge

of Increase and Multiply, made

affirmation: Yes, deliver us from

complicity.

And after the precision of scalpels,

I woke to a landscape of sunshine where

the catbird mates for life and

maps trace out no alibis—stepped

into a morning of naked truth,

where acts mean what they really are:

the purity of loving

for the sake of love.