The Farm Wife, a poem by Shari Wagner
at a
“walk-a-mile”—a Mennonite dating game
The last light was
touching the tassels
when the quiet boy from
Emma Church
tapped the guy with his
eye on college
and told him to move
forward five couples.
That’s how I met Pete.
From the soft way
he scuffed the gravel and
whistled
to a red-winged
blackbird, I could tell
he wasn’t the sort to
shoot the starlings
or tell me how to keep my
house.
Not like the boys who
talked to be talking
and walked so close they
almost pushed me
in the ditch. When Lu
Miller told me,
“Move back nine,” I
did with regret
but tagged her back when
the next girl said,
“Go forward four,” and I added five.
It was cheating, but
that’s how you knew
someone liked you—when
they came back.
At Fly Creek, cicadas
were clicking
and swallows brushed the
darkness
with their wings. Or
maybe they were bats.
Pete and I dropped back
and stood at the railing
to hear the frogs. It was
dark enough
he could ask if I had plans for next evening
and I slid my hand in
his. Our grandkids laugh
when I say they should
walk-a-mile.
When they like someone,
they text
and call that dating,
though they might be
a hundred miles apart.
The
farm wife remembers the funerals she presided over
While
Dad hitched the trailer,
I’d
lead my sisters to the special pen
and
say, “Dearly beloved,
we
are gathered to bless this calf
before
he goes to market.”
We
each said something pleasant
about
his brown eyes
and
thick lashes,
his
earnest tongue licking our hands.
By
the time they started school,
my
sisters threw their kisses,
like
passengers aboard a ship.
One chilly day, even a stick
of
chewing gum
couldn’t
bribe them to the barn.
I
poured the extra measure
of
grain into the bin,
then
stood alone with my bible,
looking
into soft eyes
that
had never seen or blinked at evil.
For
the last time, I sang,
Children
of the Heavenly Father.
It
was snowing when I left.
The
wind blew flakes into my face
and
stung my eyes.
The farm wife
ponders her mother’s cookbook
I cook by heart, adding
more of this, less
of that, but Mom, bless
her soul, never strayed
from
The
Mennonite Community Cookbook.
Among the pages, I find
slick pamphlets
she
picked up at church: Golden
Hours
with the Bible, The
Most Costly Gift,
Where
Will You Be Five Minutes After You Die?
No wonder she complained
of insomnia.
She never wrote
“delicious” or “wonderful”
in the margins, only the
same refrain: “Tried”
and “Tried.” But I
can tell that she favored
something sweet by where
the splatters fell.
Shari
Wagner
is the author of two books of poetry, The
Harmonist at Nightfall: Poems of Indiana and
Evening Chore.
She is the Indiana Poet Laureate for 2016-2017.