I never asked to be a reindeer

being the only deer

in the family

there are articles                                                                       

and photos where

my yak hunting coat

seemed to be some kind

of dressage display

and my hollow hair filled

the air with midnight sun

my father believed

that kind of publicity

would only encourage stags

so we moved to a 1 bedroom

self-catering apartment

where the canopy was high

once when I found a Lappish cheese

my father reminded me

I was a symbol

of distant good fortune

around the time

I found a recipe

in his own hand

for smoked reindeer mousse

I began to dream

our flat was thick with trees

the limited light

empty of everything

the gynaecology of flight

after the doctor heard his brother

he used shells to contact

babies in far-off lands

and sang the rose of scotland

though some arrived with beakers

of rough wine and others seemed lost or wild

they never felt so welcome

in his theatre he managed

small stages of bones and used

the ventouse and high forceps

for babies off the wagon

through the episiotomy of days

he knew their weight their blood their pallor

their boots outside the uterine door

sometimes from the fertility dreams

of tom cats he arranged

the fine tunes of conception

these babies he often found

in the ribs and mane of the forest

the lungs of their parachutes

purple gestational life

with his sail-maker’s needle

he encouraged multiple babies

who for nine months had shared

the same hotel room to keep talking

these days he lives with those babies

on whom he had first felt

the origin of wings

they teach him to fly

Kerrin P. Sharpe

Kerrin P. Sharpe’s first book three days in a wishing well was published by VUP (2012). Her work appeared in Oxford Poets 13. Her most recent book is There’s a Medical Name for This (VUP) published this August.