If I had my wife's legs I'd wear skirts with the slits up the sides every goddamn day. It's a waste of a gift from God not to if you ask me. And just because nobody's asking me don't mean I'm not going to say it still. Life's a veil too short.

If I had her legs and people tried to start something with me using the phrase, "I'm not gonna lie to you..." I'd break them out in a flash of feathery gleaming a la Edward Scissorhands, thin slices of kielbasa piling up where their black tongues once were. Not that it be all that much help, so many forked ones sprouting every day, but it'd be a start and a small contribution to something larger than myself. Lord a mercy we can only do what we can.

I just know that if I had her legs I could do better things where they'd do the most good whether the sun had ever shone there or not. So gifted in this, blessed, and though I am not the first to recognize it, I am still recognizing it, which as we keep passing through this valley of the shadow tends to become in my book real currency with the horseman who also keeps passing but will not always. If I had her legs I'd be winking at the motherfucker.

Another thing, if I had her legs is, I'd use them to teach me some self-discipline, which God knows I sorely lack. People used to say, well, that comes with age. You have other qualities. Huhuh. Don't cut it no more. Need some legs like hers to translate for me, to keep the time, to watch my wait, to fan the honeyed light through the slats in the listing tobacco barn. I'm done with Deeprock, give me the Delphonics any day.

Remember when people used to say, "That and a quarter will get you a cup of coffee"? Haha. If I had her legs me and all my friends would be guzzling espresso till the cows come home, boys, and the possums too. If I had her legs there'd no longer be a question as to the identity of the spokesman for this group. Such questions be moot.

No more hiding treasure under a bushel basket, I'll tell you that. Let it all come to light is what I say, let trumpets of glory bust through the thunderheads like cerulean flames out the towel-paper shades of a double-wide meth lab in a corn field, like pomegranate juice trickling all down her chin, like my own sweet time, like water under the bridge wrapped up and tied in a velveteen bow.

I'd be king for a day one day at a time, the patron saint of speckled curs and the scourge of every scourge, plump upon an elephant as pretty as you please giving it the papal wave and the bird simultaneously, zero tolerance unchained and cut loose to run wild in all the world no other bail bondsman happier to oblige or more accommodating to your very special run of bad breaks and misunderstandings, a dapper rube in checkered slacks, the Pinky Lee of the jet set, Bobo Brazil in full frontal cocobutt on the Sheik. I'd be the Moms Mabley of Phyllis Diller, the Soupy Sails of Clem Cadiddlehopper, the Jonathan Winters of Elke Sommer, the Larry Talbot of Dick Cheney, if I had her legs.

You'd remember me sentimentally. You'd say there was a guy who had some legs that wouldn't quit, ran all the way up to his ass they did, calves downy as doves' belly, thighs soaked in the milk of the moon and stropped smooth on palominos' glistening flanks, knees to hang your hat where no hat has ever hung, ankles tentative as a faun's in the copper-chilled creek at sunrise, shins as unadorned and true as jade compass needles; and he wasn't afraid to use them either, by God, went forth wherever they called in faith and trust and holy dread. Won't be seeing the likes of them gams again anytime soon.