The Farmer's Wife

(After Dorriane Laux’s “The Shipfitter’s Wife”)
 
At dusk, after you have plowed
the vast field—grains of green
scattered beyond my vision, I will
embraceyou,clingtoyou.
Be drowned again in the incense
of your sweat, taste it like
I have never met salt in my cooking before.

Tonight—
I’ll play another wife, after the soil
which everyday you avow
to marry and toil.
Tonight,
I’ll be waiting, languid on this bamboo bed,
to be plowed—
and become whole again.