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FARM W I F E Dark as the spring river, the earth opens each damp row as the farmer swings the far side of the field. The blackbirds flash their red wing patches and wheel in his wake, down to the black dirt; the windmill grinds in its chain rig and tower. In the kitchen, his wife is baking. She stands in the door in her long white gloves of flour. She cocks her head and tries to remember, turns like the moon toward the sea-black field. Her belly is rising, her apron fills like a sail. She is gliding now, the windmill churns beneath her, she passes the farmer, the fine map of the furrows. The neighbors point to the bone-white spot in the sky. Let her float like a fat gull that swoops and circles, before her husband comes in for supper, before her children grow up and leave her, before the pulley cranks her down the dark shaft, and the church blesses her stone bed, and the earth seals its black mouth like a scar. 31 ...

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