More From the Plowman's Wife

So hard he worked, my man became the field,

grew roots so deep his limbs spread forty acres

to the fence. I walked the sod that covered

his arms on Sunday mornings, peeled back

grass to watch worms dig out his lungs,

stripped hills to find his face. One fall day,

I buried my dog “Dog” in a copse of trees

wrapped around his feet. With nothing left,

I moved to Idaho in Illinois, a town

on the Mississippi where water

is steel-gray and swift, where currents echo

deep beneath me, deep beneath my bow.

I tattooed my skin with his skin. When I swim,

men follow me. They call me by his name.

Rancher's Lament

Smoking could bring this shake to my skin.

Lord knows it’s not a woman. Haven’t touched

one since Santa Fe & don’t intend to.

Desert sky’s all broken yokes & sides

of beef, knolls cloaked in yellow jack

& heat, slowly killing the stock of cattle.

I save all I can. Stomp my boots through

the catclaw & muck of the riverbed,

string lines & lines of fence, barbs

to quarter the fields. If the canyon’s

lip is a path only asses follow,

I’ll follow it too, though I’m careworn,

choked by soil & chamomile if that tugs

at any tissues folded in your pockets.

Hammered clefts of silt-rock, a row

of thumbs. The desert leached, blasted

about by sand. Past Palo Duro, I pound

down another post for the barbwire,

clear to the hard clay two feet under

the topsoil. Cable hand-knotted & caught

with cotton from my clothes, a few

pricks of blood. It’s twisted around itself,

taut & set to snag cur-dogs, to screen

the she-wolves I won’t give up on.