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Living with Ballads: The Nutshell Bed The landlord’s nephew, down from college, dreams the tenant farmer’s daughter calling him, the creek between them running muddy, and the wind beating apple petals in her hair, his face, and the great space beneath what used to be the swinging bridge his late father kept repaired. The posts and ropes that hold it rotted, most footplanks broken, floated downstream, this bridge can’t join their crumbly banks. He’s rooted. She steps to the edge. What’s under them? A swollen-bellied Hereford, snagged and left in sharp junk: sweeprakes, dumprakes, discs, drags, plows and sickles, springtooth harrows thick with rust, claystain, and lockjaw making what last words she’d struggle to utter (love? forgive?) unspeakable. He shudders, discovers himself yelling “Never!” across the creekbed, 27 HadawayRevisedPages 8/15/06 3:09 PM Page 27 across the bear-claw- and star-quilted bedstead he wakes into, swearing to stop her from trying to cross that incompetent bridge bound to drop her. 28 HadawayRevisedPages 8/15/06 3:09 PM Page 28 ...

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