'Still No Children?'

My biological clock
does not squat
under glass on the mantelshelf
and watch itself rotate
with gestating desperation.

My biological clock
does not display itself
on the wall in the hall,
ejaculating Big Ben's mating call.

Nor does it flaunt athletic records
and wink at winning sprinters.
Or tick on a director's wrist,
jealous of each pregnant pause
in plays by Harold Pinter.

Instead,
the sun
strokes its face
with warm, adoring fingers -
and it gives
a shifting shadow
of a smile.

Susan Richardson

Susan Richardson's play, "Two of Me Now," about biological and literary motherhood, was published by Cecil Woolf in the Bloomsbury Heritage Series last year.

If you've any comments on this poem, Susan Richardson would be pleased to hear from you.