The Withering Branch

Many women claim sole ownership during the course
of their child-bearing years of unmaterialized fruit
from blood-rich ovaries for which no names are given
and no birthday parties are celebrated. Whether due
to sterility, by choice, or having no one to love,
the offspring tree ceases growth in them.

Yet there hardly exists a deficiency of male spinsters.
Men, many men … men of the sturdy, virile, [and frankly]
proliferative variety experience a fate and a loss no
less severe; a rather superficial single life entailing
buddies kept at arms-length, beer-guzzling camaraderie,
gay jokes, and years clamoring for sexual conquests
and corporate endowment resulting years later in empty chairs
at empty tables: trees without branches, wasted fertilizer,
unwatered flowers, successes yielding no successors, closed
doors; trillions of male DNA condemned to everlasting
immotility on the proverbial unemployment line.

Alas, the third lap of the relay sans a runner to whom he
may extend the baton. The race comes to a dead stop and
continues on at the same time. His graying crown conjures
visions of a blank page, save his photo at its top, in a
family reunion program. Never married, never claimed.
In a flash he recognizes the clutter in his rear view mirror,
and flat lands in front of him for as far as any eyes can see.

When morning had broken the prospect for progeny had been
hoped for, and even expected. When the day is done he will
be no less a man, she no less a woman, and the vine’s journey
discontinued like that of all who inhabit the earth.

journeyman