What if nature is tired of being a mother,
of gendered metaphors splayed

in her honor, the suckling pigs of poetry,
obscene apple muzzles shoved snugly

under their snouts? What if she is all kinds of trans:
transitory, transmigrant, a transplanted liver

filtering the good word from the gaff? What if she isn’t
a she at all, but a beautiful bearded mountain

man, all oceanic swagger and volcanic lisp?
No remedy for identity. No one-off spring

for the inner-wintered, the homoseasonal
repressed. Diagnosis: mother-obsessed.

Let's give nature a choice for once. Let him let down
his habit-bound hair, spit, grope, and swear.

Let him eat steak and cake. Be multi-sex
beast. Be worm. Be queen and worshipful worker

in one. A bee-line made to fit. Wear it, mother. Put it on
if only to shrug it back off again and again and again.