Farmer Can't Forget

Farmer Can't Forget

(Automatic collaboration with Will Roby)

Your dress is broken in the driveway.
I'm at the diner counting pennies
for a change, and I'll be home after ten
to clean the biscuit tin you've left me in:
three kids and a diabetic guinea pig.

Your mother lost her figure in 1974,
while pulling taffy at the county fair.
I carried laundry for the fat man,
while you fed a bearded lady
with a plastic fork and a rusted can.

We arranged for a secular marriage,
changed from linens to quilts in the wicker carriage.
I couldn't find a priest in the tri-county.
So I crossed the border into Canada
and got us married by a bearded Mountie.

On our wedding day, the songbirds fled the farm.
I left my boots by the barn like two tarred lanterns,
and you lit them. Ran to Tahoka with dust in your shoes.

Today, I'm drinking with the dog,
and I've been talking to myself for years:
When we slept together at the motel,
I acted sad, but I had a lotus in my hands.
You had those feathers in your hair,
and we swooned, remember?